What are you hoping to accomplish?

I have spoken with executives who believe that all data and analytics projects and efforts can be outsourced. That is possible, I suppose. I have never seen this type of effort deliver strategic impact and value, but that does not mean that it cannot happen.

One of the problems of outsourcing anything – not only analytics but any project – is that you need to know what you want to have in the end before you start. How can you expect an external vendor to deliver exactly what you want, when you want it, at the expected cost when you don't know what you want or how to achieve it? Sounds straightforward, right? You would be surprised how many executives, firms, and teams have little to no idea of what they want to do.

This is a particularly acute problem in analytics currently. With the land grab mentality that some firms have, it is challenging to define what they want. Remember the statement, "We need some machine learning...