Hi, I'm Randy.
I work at and frequently write about the crossroad of data, technology, and business.
About
Hi, I'm Randy LariarI lead a data and analytics consulting practice. I write and tweet about my experiences working with data, analytics, and AI with companies of all shapes and sizes.I'm someone who enjoys dabbling in many things, finding new perspectives, experiences, and connections.I am an engineer who enjoys learning about how objects and organizations work; and how they can be optimized.I am always open to chat.My writing is a mix of consulting, business strategy, and economics; Machine Learning and AI (machine learning is written in code, AI is written on slides); frameworks, checklists, and templates; Technology, data architecture, organizational design, managing change; parenting, sailing, great food, travel; Interesting things you can do with SQL, Python, R, Excel, and TI-82 programable calculators.
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Some of my recent writing
What's your data worth to you?
What’s your data worth to you?How much money would you pay in ransom if tomorrow you lost access to all your contacts, bank accounts, music playlists, and travel receipts? It would be devastating, and we’ve all seen how companies and cyber insurance companies have struggled to fairly measure and quantify the value of that compromised data. As individuals we would probably pay quite a lot for our own data to be safe.On the flip side, I was able to receive a claim a part of the Equifax breach settlement. The legal system has determined that my personal data was worth $8.73. Choosing between using a different password on every system and losing $8.73 cents might not be the right trade off.More broadly, companies don’t know what their data is worth. Sure, sure “Data is an Asset” and “Data is the New Oil” – cool. I can find Assets on the company balance sheet. If a company has the same personal data that was breached from Equifax and has that data for 1,000,000 people, do they then have a balance sheet line item for $8,730,000? Nope.Leading organizations are beginning to think about the dollars and cents behind data. Especially as they begin making decisions about migrating to cloud or data loss prevention programs it is important to know what the value is that we are defending. There’s no commonly accepted accounting principal for this, but we’ve seen a combination of the following methodologies used and sometimes discuss with clients:• Market Value – How much money could we get in the open market if we sold this data?
• Economic Value – What is the difference in revenue with and without the availability of the data
• Intrinsic Value – How valid, complete, scarce, and long will the data be valuable, especially benchmarked against other datasets which have Market or Economic value figures?
•Cost Value - What would it take for the company to buy or collect this dataset if they didn’t already have it?
•Waste Value – What are the actual business liabilities and expenses that could occur due to poor data quality? Lost business, inefficiencies, opportunity cost, regulatory fines, reputational damage, etc.
•Risk Value – Adding up all the negative impacts to the business because of damage, loss or theft of data. Sum up all the potential bad thing x % likelihood they occur.There are many ways to measure value and lots of data around to do it. Picking the right measure is less important than having some measure and using it consistently to make decisions. The right framework makes the dreamwork!