Skene Intelligence*

Really enjoyed this morning’s thought provoking Thought.Leaders discussion in Melbourne with @ThoughtSpot with Ajeet Singh, Cindi Howson and Glenda Crisp.

Great to hear from the Co-founder and Executive Chairman Ajeet Singh and his vision for ThoughtSpot and how he’s seeking to improve analytics and adoption through a human centric approach to applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) insights, and engendering trust. For his belief (and one that I share) is that only when users trust the data and information that they are being presented, will they truly adopt and embrace a product.

He left us with a STAR (Security, Transparency, Accuracy, Relevance) framework to consider when implementing trusted AI and demonstrated how this was achieved in ThoughtSpot with some working examples stepping through the framework.

Again, a key takeaway being that while functionality and ease of use is important to user adoption – trust is at the centre of this process. To truly embrace and achieve value through an analytics product users need to be able to easily access where the information came from (transparency and lineage) as well as trusting the numbers, calculations, etc. (accuracy) with insights that they care about (relevance).

Also threw out a challenge to the audience to embrace AI in organisations to benefit our users, customers and communities, even if only starting small at first.

Some favourite quotes from the discussion, paraphrased…

Data is not just a visualisation problem, it’s a user experience problem

Ajeet Singh, Co-founder ThoughtSpot

From a user perspective always think about “WIFM – What’s in it for me” behind everything you do, what drives the user, their needs, otherwise you’re just giving them another (reporting or analytics) tool

Cindi Howson, Chief Data Strategy Officer ThoughtSpot

I want staff to think of a question when they start the day, not just a number on a dashboard”

Glenda Crisp, Chief Data Officer NAB

Thanks presenters and ThoughtSpot. Looking forward to seeing the continued successful adoption of ThoughtSpot at my employer, NAB and the continuing evolution of the product… It’s going to be a great ride!