Data is the Topic of the Day at Second Executive BIA Summit

The Helzberg School of Management’s second annual Executive Summit on Business Intelligence and Analytics on Friday, Oct. 28, put data front and center, inviting leaders from across different industries to campus for a daylong discussion of the ways that analytics are changing nearly every industry, from bread-and-butter accounting firms to hip marketing agencies.

The idea of providing an annual opportunity for executives to share knowledge came last year, when the Helzberg School of Management hosted experts from companies like Cerner and AT&T to talk about the innovative ways they are applying data.

Hosting the summit also fits with the Helzberg School of Management’s growing slate of programs that aim to train future leaders in the emerging disciplines of data analytics and business intelligence.

One of this year’s keynote speakers, Gary Belske, ’77, Americas deputy managing partner at global accounting firm EY, said there is no doubt that the emergence of new streams of data has opened up new territory, and opportunities, for businesses. But that data also represents a challenge.

“A lot of what we’re going through is change management,” he said. “If companies are going to survive, they’re going to have to adapt. Their business models are going to have to change, and how well they can manage that change is going to be critical to their long-term success.”

While EY has long been among the top tier of accounting firms, Belske said new ways to cull and analyze data have opened new doors for companies like his and transformed the workplace. In recent years, he said EY has found itself branching into new arenas, like helping optimize online customer portals for cruise lines and working with agricultural companies to improve farmers’ crop yields — all things that are made possible by data.

“I really don’t think you can talk about big data without talking about technology, because that is what enables that data,” he said. “It enables us to process it. And it enables us to use it in ways we could only dream about when I entered the accounting profession.”

Introducing the day, the Rev. Thomas B. Curran, S.J., president of Rockhurst University, said the idea of making decisions based on the best possible evidence is entirely in keeping with the University’s Jesuit identity, and the way the Society of Jesus approached their mission.

“They were very much of the opinion that you engage the world. You don’t see it as dark, you take the world as it is and you try to understand it,” he said, “really digging into the data, if you will.”

Over the course of an afternoon in Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Hall, executives did a little digging themselves, hearing keynote speeches, asking questions of an executive panel of analytics experts, and taking part in smaller group discussions of the changing role of analytics. Giving executives that chance to talk to each other, Belske said, gave the conversations a breadth of different perspectives and experiences.

“I thought it was fun,” he said. “I was asked to look back on my 39-year career and share that, and if there’s some nugget that will help somebody else to tackle a problem in their firm, that’s what it’s all about.”