PAW 2019 Conference Series - Lawrence Cowan - Cicero Group

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Lawrence Cowan, Senior Partner and COO of Cicero Group. Find Lawrence Online: Email: [email protected] LinkedIn Cicero Group [00:02] Hi, I’m Jamin.  You’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  My guest today is Lawrence. He is a partner at Cicero Group.  We are live at Predictive Analytics World, Marketing Analytics World.  There’s eight worlds. I forget all the worlds, but we’re covering a gamut of health care, etc. etc.  Welcome to the show, Lawrence. [00:21]   Thanks, appreciate it.  Thanks for having me. [00:22]   Yeah, of course.  You guys are exhibiting here. [00:25]   We are. [00:25]   What do you think about the show? [00:27] It’s been a great experience so far.  I’ve been to three or four of these, and they get larger every year.  I think the organizers do a great job putting on the event. And the topics continue to expand as well.  So far, our interactions with the audience have been very engaging: great questions, hard questions. But we’ve enjoyed it so far.   [00:50] That’s great.  So, tell me a little bit about Cicero group.  What do you guys do? [00:53]    You bet.  So, Cicero Group is a full-service management consulting company.  We emphasize in data analytics and data strategy. Our roots were actually in market research.  And so, we identified the value of data early on in the strategic projects we were working on. And so, we leveraged primary market research in a lot of our work and have continued to expand that into more strategic transformation strategy, advanced analytics work as well. [01:24] That’s great.  One of the terms I’ve been hearing recently at this conference (I’ve never heard it before) is data diversity.  And I think that you’re hitting on that exact point, right? It’s about the primary data that’s collected and then really trying to triangulate truth even though sometimes it’s a lot more than three points. [01:42]   It really is.  Yeah, so, bringing new data to the table is critical in all the projects we work on.  Primary research happens to be a big one but, again, a lot of the topics people are talking about at the conference today are other sources of data:  secondary data, partner data. There’s so many opportunities with leveraging data these days.     [02:04] Got it.  Talk to me about who an ideal customer is. [02:07]  That’s a great question.  So, we serve a broad spectrum of industries and business functions.  I think our sweet spot, I would say, is more in the sales and marketing and insights and analytics functions within organizations.  And if you look at the services we’re offering,