How to conduct and use data analytics for consulting firms

Key quotes:

• "If you’re a data scientist considering the freelance lifestyle, or a seasoned consultant with strong technical chops thinking of running your own engagements, opportunities abound! This series of posts is my attempt to distill best practices learned over a decade of consulting with dozens of organizations in the private, public, and philanthropic sectors."
• "Each engagement is a learning opportunity, and I’ll share what I can from this client, as permissible."
• "At the end of the day, data science is about making better decisions."
• "In addition, these expert consultants collected business rules and hard data from stakeholders."
• "I don’t remember a single engagement where we (the consulting team) received all the data we needed to properly start working on kickoff day."
• "I learned quickly that no matter how tech-savvy the client is, or how vehemently data is promised, key puzzle pieces are always missing."

Key quotes:

• "Headquarters: Pune, India Core clients: JJ Food Service, BuilderMT, Transparent Technologies, Inc Pay per hour: Not Revealed Number of employees: 50–249 Website: https://www.saviantconsulting.com/ Headquartered in California, USA, Squadex is a technology consulting and engineering company that provides big data services."
• "Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA Core clients: Model N, NinthDecimal, Nitrio Pay per hour: Not Revealed Number of employees: 250–999 Website: https://squadex.com/ Founded in 2002, CBIG Consulting is an American company offering business intelligence and big data analytics solutions."
• "Headquarters: Warsaw, Poland Core clients: Spotify, Allegro, Agora, Freshmail, Truecaller, GoEuro Pay per hour: $50 — $99 Number of employees: 10–49 Website: https://getindata.com/ Established in 2008, Kavi Global is an analytical company that delivers a whole spectrum of big data services."
• "Headquarters: Princeton, NJ Core clients: Not Revealed Pay per hour: < $25 Number of employees: 250–999 Website: https://www.indiumsoftware.com/ Israel-based Fayrix is a custom software development company and big data services provider with 1530 IT experts on board."

Key quotes:

• "Getting your first client as a data science consultant is just like trying to get your first job with no experience."
• "Similar to job searching, when working to get your first client to notice you, you’ll need to be everywhere."
• "It used to be that the only way you could get clients was by knowing the right people."
• "Pinal clearly knows what he is doing and has provided a lot of valuable content for free and I am sure he still gets plenty of clients."
• "Offering free resources or a simple free service related to what you are consulting on are great ways to attract possible clients."
• "Creating content is a great way to develop trust and show you know what you are talking about."

Key quotes:

• "In particular, understanding what kinds of software runs best on different types of computers is vital to being able to scope the hardware requirements for your Big Data work to succeed."
• "Just as it’s very useful to learn to speak a language before going to another country, it’s very valuable to know how to code if you are a consultant working in Big Data."
• "However, there is a big difference between running some numbers in Excel and putting findings in PPT and a full SaaS offering, such as Python scripts crunching data in a Hadoop environment with a MySQL database and an Apache Tomcat web server pushing recommendations to a user’s Internet browser."
• "When your algorithms feed output into a visual layer (such as a website), you don’t need to check every number in your PPT because if the code is written well, Big Data analytics turn into business insights that an executive can get anywhere she has Internet access."

Key quotes:

• "Some companies approach data science vendors to build products whose key functionality is centered around machine learning."
• "In the broadest sense, you can apply data science to gain insights about your business and improve your operational efficiency, or you may want to deliver AI-based applications to your end-customers."
• "As your data analytics platform doesn’t support this feature, you need the one that’s customized to analyze feedback in your domain."
• "The website has the list of data science consulting companies with brief descriptions of their expertise and office location."
• "Experfy is a Harvard-based data science consulting marketplace where clients from various industries can partner with experts for short- and long-term projects."
• "A data science consultancy company with a domain knowledge goes beyond delivering a solution: Specialists can consult you regarding the product development and usually spend less time studying your problem."