Privacy Policy
1. Data protection overview
General information
The following notes provide a simple overview of what happens to your personal data when you visit our website. Personal data is any data by which you can be personally identified. For detailed information on the subject of data protection, please refer to our data protection declaration listed below this text.
Data collection on our website
Who is responsible for data collection on this website?
The data processing on this website is carried out by Goldblum Consulting, Inh. Ansgar Bittermann Whose contact details can be found in the imprint of this website.
How do we collect your data?
On the one hand, your data is collected when you provide it to us. This can be, for example, data that you enter in a contact form.
Other data is collected automatically by our IT systems when you visit the website. This is mainly technical data (e.g. Internet browser, operating system or time of page view). This data is collected automatically as soon as you enter our website.
What do we use your data for?
Some of the data is collected to ensure error-free provision of the website. Other data may be used to analyze your user behavior.
What rights do you have regarding your data?
You have the right to receive information about the origin, recipient and purpose of your stored personal data free of charge at any time. You also have a right to demand the correction, blocking or deletion of this data. For this purpose, as well as for further questions on the subject of data protection, you can contact us at any time at the address given in the imprint. Furthermore, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent supervisory authority.
Analysis tools and tools from third-party providers
When visiting our website, your surfing behavior may be statistically analyzed. This is done primarily with cookies and with so-called analysis programs. The analysis of your surfing behavior is usually anonymous; the surfing behavior cannot be traced back to you. You can object to this analysis or prevent it by not using certain tools. You can find detailed information on this in the following data protection declaration.
We will inform you about the objection options in this data protection declaration.
2. General notes and mandatory information
Data protection
The operators of these pages take the protection of your personal data very seriously. We treat your personal data confidentially and in accordance with the statutory data protection regulations and this data protection declaration.
When you use this website, various personal data are collected. Personal data is data with which you can be personally identified. This privacy policy explains what data we collect and what we use it for. It also explains how and for what purpose this is done.
We would like to point out that data transmission on the Internet (e.g. when communicating by e-mail) can have security gaps. Complete protection of data against access by third parties is not possible.
Note on the responsible office
The responsible party for data processing on this website is:
Goldblum Consulting, Inh. Ansgar Bittermann
Wöhlertstrasse 20
10115 Berlin
The responsible body is the natural or legal person who alone or jointly with others determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data (e.g. names, e-mail addresses or similar).
Revocation of your consent to data processing
Many data processing operations are only possible with your express consent. You can revoke an already given consent at any time. For this purpose, an informal communication by e-mail to us is sufficient. The legality of the data processing carried out until the revocation remains unaffected by the revocation.
Right of appeal to the competent supervisory authority
In the event of violations of data protection law, the data subject has a right of appeal to the competent supervisory authority. The competent supervisory authority in matters of data protection law is the state data protection commissioner of the federal state in which our company is based. A list of data protection officers and their contact details can be found at the following link:
https://datenschutz.ekd.de/ueber-uns/unsere-standorte/
Right to data portability
You have the right to have data that we process automatically on the basis of your consent or in performance of a contract handed over to you or to a third party in a common, machine-readable format. If you request the direct transfer of the data to another controller, this will only be done insofar as it is technically feasible.
SSL or TLS encryption
For security reasons and to protect the transmission of confidential content, such as orders or requests that you send to us as the site operator, this site uses SSL or TLS encryption. You can recognize an encrypted connection by the fact that the address line of the browser changes from “http://” to “https://” and by the lock symbol in your browser line.
If SSL or TLS encryption is activated, the data you transmit to us cannot be read by third parties.
Encrypted payment transactions on this website
If, after the conclusion of a contract with costs, there is an obligation to transmit your payment data to us (e.g. account number in the case of direct debit authorization), this data is required for payment processing.
Payment transactions via the common means of payment (Visa/MasterCard, direct debit) are made exclusively via an encrypted SSL or TLS connection. You can recognize an encrypted connection by the fact that the address line of the browser changes from “http://” to “https://” and by the lock symbol in your browser line.
With encrypted communication, your payment data that you transmit to us cannot be read by third parties.
Information, blocking, deletion
Within the framework of the applicable legal provisions, you have the right at any time to free information about your stored personal data, their origin and recipient and the purpose of data processing and, if necessary, a right to correction, blocking or deletion of this data. For this purpose, as well as for further questions on the subject of personal data, you can contact us at any time at the address given in the imprint.
Objection to advertising e-mails
We hereby object to the use of contact data published within the framework of the imprint obligation to send advertising and information material that has not been expressly requested. The operators of the pages expressly reserve the right to take legal action in the event of the unsolicited sending of advertising information, such as spam e-mails.
3. Data collection on our website
Cookies
The Internet pages partly use so-called cookies. Cookies do not cause any damage to your computer and do not contain viruses. Cookies serve to make our offer more user-friendly, more effective and safer. Cookies are small text files that are stored on your computer and saved by your browser.
Most of the cookies we use are so-called “session cookies”. They are automatically deleted after the end of your visit. Other cookies remain stored on your terminal device until you delete them. These cookies allow us to recognize your browser on your next visit.
You can set your browser so that you are informed about the setting of cookies and only allow cookies in individual cases, exclude the acceptance of cookies for certain cases or in general and activate the automatic deletion of cookies when closing the browser. If cookies are deactivated, the functionality of this website may be limited.
Cookies that are required to carry out the electronic communication process or to provide certain functions you have requested (e.g. shopping cart function) are stored on the basis of Art. 6 (1) lit. f DSGVO. The website operator has a legitimate interest in storing cookies for the technically error-free and optimized provision of its services. Insofar as other cookies (e.g. cookies for analyzing your surfing behavior) are stored, these are treated separately in this data protection declaration.
Server log files
The provider of the pages automatically collects and stores information in so-called server log files, which your browser automatically transmits to us. These are:
- browser type and browser version
- Operating system used
- referrer URL
- Host name of the accessing computer
- Time of the server request
- IP address
- This data is not merged with other data sources.
The basis for data processing is Art. 6 (1) lit. f DSGVO, which permits the processing of data for the fulfillment of a contract or pre-contractual measures.
Contact form
If you send us inquiries via contact form, your data from the inquiry form, including the contact data you provided there, will be stored by us for the purpose of processing the inquiry and in case of follow-up questions. We do not pass on this data without your consent.
The processing of the data entered in the contact form is therefore based exclusively on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO). You can revoke this consent at any time. For this purpose, an informal communication by e-mail to us is sufficient. The legality of the data processing operations carried out until the revocation remains unaffected by the revocation.
The data you entered in the contact form will remain with us until you request us to delete it, revoke your consent to store it, or the purpose for storing the data no longer applies (e.g. after we have completed processing your request). Mandatory legal provisions – in particular retention periods – remain unaffected.
Registration on this website
You can register on our website in order to use additional functions on the site. We use the data entered for this purpose only for the purpose of using the respective offer or service for which you have registered. The mandatory information requested during registration must be provided in full. Otherwise we will reject the registration.
For important changes, for example in the scope of the offer or for technically necessary changes, we use the e-mail address provided during registration to inform you in this way.
The processing of the data entered during registration is based on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO). You can revoke any consent you have given at any time. For this purpose, an informal communication by e-mail to us is sufficient. The legality of the data processing already carried out remains unaffected by the revocation.
The data collected during registration will be stored by us as long as you are registered on our website and will then be deleted. Legal retention periods remain unaffected.
Processing of data (customer and contract data)
We collect, process and use personal data only to the extent that they are necessary for the establishment, content or modification of the legal relationship (inventory data). This is done on the basis of Art. 6 (1) lit. b DSGVO, which permits the processing of data for the fulfillment of a contract or pre-contractual measures. We collect, process and use personal data about the use of our Internet pages (usage data) only insofar as this is necessary to enable the user to use the service or to bill the user.
The collected customer data will be deleted after completion of the order or termination of the business relationship. Legal retention periods remain unaffected.
Data transfer upon conclusion of a contract for online stores, dealers and shipment of goods
We transmit personal data to third parties only if this is necessary in the context of contract processing, for example, to the companies entrusted with the delivery of the goods, the companies entrusted with the processing of deadlines or the credit institution or payment provider (Stripe) entrusted with the processing of payments… A further transmission of the data does not take place or only if you have expressly agreed to the transmission. Your data will not be passed on to third parties without your express consent, for example for advertising purposes.
The basis for data processing is Art. 6 (1) lit. b DSGVO, which permits the processing of data for the fulfillment of a contract or pre-contractual measures.
Data transfer upon conclusion of a contract for services and digital content
We transmit personal data to third parties only if this is necessary in the context of contract processing, for example to the credit institution commissioned with payment processing.
Further transmission of data does not take place or only if you have expressly consented to the transmission. Your data will not be passed on to third parties without your express consent, for example for advertising purposes.
The basis for data processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. b DSGVO, which permits the processing of data for the fulfillment of a contract or pre-contractual measures.
Prepayment
If you select the payment method prepayment, we will provide you with our bank details on the overview page and in the order confirmation and deliver the goods after receipt of payment. If the payment is not received on our account within 10 days after conclusion of the contract, we are entitled to withdraw from the contract.
4. Analysis tools and advertising
Google Analytics
This website uses functions of the web analysis service Google Analytics. The provider is Google Ireland Limited (“Google”), Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Google Analytics uses so-called “cookies”. These are text files that are stored on your computer and enable an analysis of your use of the website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of this website is usually transmitted to a Google server in the USA and stored there.
The storage of Google Analytics cookies is based on Art. 6 (1) lit. f DSGVO. The website operator has a legitimate interest in analyzing user behavior in order to optimize both its web offering and its advertising.
IP anonymization
We have activated the IP anonymization function on this website. This means that your IP address will be shortened by Google within member states of the European Union or in other states party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area before being transmitted to the USA. Only in exceptional cases will the full IP address be transmitted to a Google server in the USA and shortened there. On behalf of the operator of this website, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website operator. The IP address transmitted by your browser as part of Google Analytics will not be merged with any other data held by Google.
Browser Plugin
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. You can also prevent the collection of data generated by the cookie and related to your use of the website (including your IP address) to Google and the processing of this data by Google by downloading and installing the browser plugin available at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=de.
Objection to data collection
You can prevent the collection of your data by Google Analytics by clicking on the following link. An opt-out cookie will be set, which will prevent the collection of your data during future visits to this website: Google Analytics opt-out.
More information on how Google Analytics handles user data can be found in Google’s privacy policy: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6004245?hl=de.
Order data processing
We have concluded an order data processing agreement with Google and fully implement the strict requirements of the German data protection authorities when using Google Analytics.
Demographic characteristics with Google Analytics
This website uses the “demographic characteristics” function of Google Analytics. This allows reports to be generated that contain statements about the age, gender and interests of site visitors. This data comes from interest-based advertising from Google as well as visitor data from third-party providers. This data cannot be assigned to a specific person. You can deactivate this function at any time via the ad settings in your Google account or generally prohibit the collection of your data by Google Analytics as shown in the item “Objection to data collection”.
5. Newsletter
Newsletter data
If you would like to receive the newsletter offered on the website, we require an e-mail address from you as well as information that allows us to verify that you are the owner of the specified e-mail address and agree to receive the newsletter. Further data is not collected or only on a voluntary basis. We use this data exclusively for sending the requested information and do not pass it on to third parties.
The processing of the data entered in the newsletter registration form is based exclusively on your consent (Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO). You can revoke your consent to the storage of the data, the e-mail address and their use for sending the newsletter at any time, for example via the “unsubscribe” link in the newsletter. The legality of the data processing operations already carried out remains unaffected by the revocation.
The data you provide for the purpose of receiving the newsletter will be stored by us until you unsubscribe from the newsletter and will be deleted after you unsubscribe from the newsletter. Data that has been stored by us for other purposes (e.g. e-mail addresses for the member area) remains unaffected by this.
6. Plugins and tools
Appointment booking – Cituro
This site uses the service Cituro from Florian Heymel Consulting, Schertlinstraße 48, 86159 Augsburg for appointment booking and payment processing. For this purpose, an external Java script from Florian Heymel Consulting is built into our website. You can find more information about the handling of user data on the Cituro application pages on the order processing page at https://www.cituro.com/agb-av.
Google Maps
This site uses the map service Google Maps via an API. The provider is Google Ireland Limited (“Google”), Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland.
To use the functions of Google Maps, it is necessary to store your IP address. This information is usually transferred to a Google server in the USA and stored there. The provider of this site has no influence on this data transmission.
The use of Google Maps is in the interest of an appealing presentation of our online offers and an easy location of the places indicated by us on the website. This represents a legitimate interest within the meaning of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO.
More information on the handling of user data can be found in Google’s privacy policy: https://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/privacy/.
Webfont from GoogleFonts or Fonts.com.
This site uses so-called web fonts provided by Monotype GmbH (fonts.com or fast.fonts.net) for the uniform display of fonts. When you call up a page, your browser loads the required web fonts into your browser cache in order to display texts and fonts correctly.
For this purpose, the browser you are using must connect to the servers of fonts.com. This enables fonts.com to know that our website has been accessed via your IP address. The use of Fonts.com web fonts is in the interest of a uniform and appealing presentation of our online offers. This represents a legitimate interest within the meaning of Art. 6 Para. 1 lit. f DSGVO.
If your browser does not support web fonts, a standard font will be used by your computer.
You can find more information about these web fonts at https://www.fonts.com/info/legal and in the privacy policy of Fonts.com: https://www.fonts.com/info/legal/privacy and in the privacy policy of Monotype GmbH: https://www.monotype.com/legal/privacy-policy.
Imprint
Commercially and fiscally represented by:
Goldblum Consulting, Inh. Ansgar Bittermann
Wöhlertstrasse 20
10115 Berlin
Publisher ( V.i.S.d.P.):
Dipl.-Psychologe Ansgar Bittermann, address see above
Responsible for the content according to § 18 Abs. 2 MStV : Dipl.-Psych Ansgar Bittermann (address see above)
Value added tax
Value Added Tax number according to §27a German Umsatzsteuergesetz:
DE350317965
Dispute resolution
We are prepared to participate in the procedure for out-of-court dispute resolution in accordance with the German Consumer Dispute Resolution Act (VSBG) in the event of disputes under civil law. The competent body for out-of-court dispute resolution matters is the Zentrum für Schlichtung e.V., Strassburger Str. 8, 77694 Kehl (www.verbraucher-schlichter.de).
Disclaimer
1. Content of the online offer
The author reserves the right not to be responsible for the topicality, correctness, completeness or quality of the information provided. Liability claims against the author, which refer to material or immaterial nature caused by use or disuse of the information or the use of incorrect or incomplete information are excluded, unless the author is not intentional or grossly negligent fault. All offers are subject to change and non-binding. Parts of the pages or the complete publication including all offers and information might be extended, changed or partly or completely deleted by the author without separate announcement.
2. References and links
The author is not responsible for any contents linked or referred to from his pages – unless he has full knowledge of illegal contents and would be able to prevent the visitors of his site from viewing those pages. The author therefore expressly declares that at the time the links were created, the corresponding linked pages were free of illegal content. The author has no influence on the current and future design and content of the linked pages. Therefore, he hereby expressly dissociates himself from all contents of all linked pages that were changed after the link was set. This statement applies to all links and references set within the author’s own Internet offer as well as to external entries in guest books, discussion forums and mailing lists set up by the author. For illegal, incorrect or incomplete contents and especially for damages resulting from the use or non-use of such information, only the provider of the linked page is liable, not the one who has linked to the respective publication.
3. Copyright and trademark law
The author endeavors to observe the copyrights of the graphics, sound documents, video sequences and texts used in all publications, to use graphics, sound documents, video sequences and texts created by himself or to use license-free graphics, sound documents, video sequences and texts. All brand names and trademarks mentioned on the website and possibly protected by third parties are subject without restriction to the provisions of the applicable trademark law and the ownership rights of the respective registered owners. The mere mention of a trademark does not imply that it is not protected by the rights of third parties! The copyright for published objects created by the author himself remains solely with the author of the pages. Any duplication or use of objects such as diagrams, sounds or texts in other electronic or printed publications is not permitted without the author’s agreement.
4. Legal validity of this disclaimer
This disclaimer is to be regarded as part of the internet publication which you were referred from. If sections or individual terms of this statement are not legal or correct, the content or validity of the other parts remain uninfluenced by this fact.
Science Hacks – Goldblum’s Assessment Center
As we saw in the previous articles of this mini-series, common methods of hiring staff are not sufficient. Pre-screening had a validity of only 18 % and personal interviews ranged von 5-25 % validity, while structured interviews allowed a validity of 30-40%. That means that in best case scenario, the decision whom to hire will be probably wrong in 60 – 70%.
In order to overcome this roadblock, psychology departments around the world have researched supporting measures to increase this number.
As this article is focusing on small and medium companies, I am limiting myself to solutions which can actually be used by small and medium companies for a reasonable price.
The solutions which should be added to your hiring process are part of the psychological diagnostics psychometrical assessments. Here, important variables of the human mind, important for fitting into a company, are researched and metrized. Metrizing means making non-countable things countable. For example the ability to be open for change or the ability to bear a lot of stress. These important variables of the human mind are being tested with scientifically validated tests. These tests differ from normal tests you do at Facebook (“which city am I”, “which character of Sex and the city am I”). Years of research are needed to create these tests, to make sure that they measure what they actually pretend to measure.
Out of these psychometrical assessments, three classes of tests can support your hiring process significantly with a combined validity of up to 80%!
Three classes of tests which let you science hack the hiring process
- Intelligence tests
- Personality tests
- Motivational- and interest tests
Research showed that testing the intelligence of your applicants in combination with personality tests and motivational tests help to determine the potential fit of your employee significantly. As research showed it can increase the validity of your hiring process to up to 80%. That is quite a jump from 5%-25% validity by just using personal interviews.
How to get these tests?
A licensed psychologist, focusing of psychological assessment, will know which personality or intelligence test to use and what motivational test to add. He/she will be able to conduct these tests with the applicant, and evaluate the results. The testing can be done either in person or also fully remote. The timely effort for the applicant, can be as low as 2-3 hours. And the cost is fully reasonable. I would advise not to use tests which are not scientifically validated or “based on ..”. Although they might have flashy websites, the test might not test what it pretends to test. And then you are back to your 5-25%.
I hope that this mini-series could shed some light on how to use sciene-hacks to improve your hiring process.
Goldblum consulting has its own digital test center offering small and medium companies the ability to add psychometrics (personality tests, intelligence tests, motivational tests) in multiple languages to their hiring process.
Personal Interview
Let’s assume with God’s mercy, you did not throw out the potentially right candidates in the pre-screening phase – despite a 82% chance.
Personal (unstructured) interview
Now you pass onto the personal interviews. Personal interviews are highly subjective and reduce the value of your decision. The brain is a complex machine and we are not able to process all information with the same dominance. That means that certain elements of a discussion (bad hair cut, questionable pullover, garlic for lunch) will subconsciously overweigh other needed skills.
Research could show that the validity for personal interviews to pick the right candidate was 5 – 25%. 5 per cent? 5 per cent! That is incredibly bad. If you would have four candidates in your short list and instead of personal interviews you would have a lottery for the position, then the chances would also be 25%.
Personal structured interview
One of the reasons, why the validity of personal interviews is so low, is that everybody does it by his/her/its own taste. Some just chat, some talk about themselves, some have not read the CV of the applicant, some do not know the position properly…There are many ways to hold an interview, but if you do not structure the interview for your company, there will not be a consistant outcome across the whole company. To overcome this, many companies use structured interviews. A structured interview has a clear process, every employee / HR manager has to follow. A potential structured interview could look like this:
- Interview starts / warm up questions
- Applicant introduces himself
- HR manager / employee asks questions to the applicant’s CV
- Information to the position
- Answering questions to the position
- End of discussion, answering other question
This structured interview significantly increases the validity of the personal interview. But it only rises to 30-40%. It is much better than 5-25% but in 6-7 cases, the interviewer gets the result wrong. Just imagine, there would be vaccine against Coronoa which would only work in 30-40% of the time. No one would take it.
So, how can you fix this clearly broken hiring process?
In the next section we will introduce scientific methods to science-hack the hiring process.
Pre-Screening Phase
Science found that the validity of using normal pre-screening is very low. If you screen people by their CV and sent-in-documents, your chance of being right is 18%. Let me repeat this: eighteen per cent!. This means that in 82 % of the cases, the choice was wrong and you either throw out the right candidates or invite the wrong ones.
Pre-Screening in small to medium companies mostly happens either by a secretary, personal assistant, the intern or sometimes by a HR manager. Studies found that HR managers mostly look
- for formal aspects like tidiness of the CV,
- completeness of the documents,
- orthographical errors
- and formal matches to the job application list you gave them
- they screen work references,
- reasons for changing the job
- or grades in school and university.
But these decision measurements seem to be 82% wrong. If your code throws errors in 82% of the time, you want to re-do it. And if your A.I. algorithm has an error rate of 82% it is considered not really good. But for strange reasons many companies never question the decision making process for the pre-screening phase. Or how many times do you do a pre-screening review with your HR managers to discuss their performance and underlying decision making process?
We have university psychology departments who have been researching on this topic for now almost 100 years, but the science does not seem to be applied in the majority of the companies.
I am not writing about this, because it is a theoretical issue. Employees are the gold of each company. And everyone is talking about the “war of talents” and “how hard it is to find good employees”, but by ignoring the basics of good pre-screening, your employee in the HR department or the intern or the secretary might constantly eliminate the best fitting candidates and the future-employees without even knowing it.
But do not worry. At the end of the week, we will look at potential solutions for these problems. However, before we look at potential solutions, we will visint the next phase of the hiring process in the next section: the personal interview.
Common hiring process produces 85% disengaged employees
You are doing a great job, got your project funded or your business roaring and now you need new employees. Well done!
Future is already here, but not evenly distributed.
But what happens next (in many cases) can only be described as “Back to the past”. Science has brought us artificial intelligence, improved medicine and a ticket to Mars. But when it comes to hiring, many people ignore the results science has produced in the field of hiring. For that reason I would like to discuss some scientific findings and how to use these science-hacks for your advantage.
The common structure of a hiring process.
- Companies normally publish their job offerings on their website or a portal or engage a headhunter / recruiting agency.
- Then the applicants send in their CV or github / medium handle.
- Someone pre-screens the applicants,
- You have telephone interviews with the long list,
- You have personal interviews with the short list which are also being screened by SMEs (either by talks, in-office test days or test works)
- And then you decide who you like most and make offer
This process might sound familiar to many of us. And let’s be honest. Although hiring is the most important task for a company, many people involved in the hiring process are in no way trained to do interviews, screen applications or actually decide what is “a good candidate”.
So what would be the problem, if the hiring process is flawed? Well, this leads in the end to a high number of dissatisfied employees, drop outs during the trial period or a generally high churn rate. And if you think that a headhunter might easily get 20.000 Euros for a filled position, I assume people want to make sure that the money is not wasted. Furthermore Gallup showed in a global survey that 85% of all employees are disengaged in their job. That means that 85% of the employees do not fit into the companies they work in. That is horribly bad! And it is a clear sign that something is wrong in the way that people are hired in companies. If you think about it. The whole hiring process is designed for the sole purpose of testing, if a person will fit into your company. If the fit is good, the person will feel engaged. If it is bad, the person will underperform, disturb the well-being of your team, quit internally, be fired or leave the company. But with 85% of the employees feeling disenganged, it seems that -please excuse my directness – “letting a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at an applicants’ board” would yield a better result.
In the next section, we will look in detail at eye-opening scientific findings to the pre-screening phase.
Roles in AI
# You
If you are launching your first AI project, you should be part of it. Never give key responsibilities out of your hand and since AI will be one of your key pillars in your company, you should be part of it: from the start. You will have to be the “decision maker”, the person who understands how your company is creating value as a business, for employees and for customers. Don’t just allocate 30 minutes a week to this project. Take hours, take walks, take breaks from your daily routine and learn about AI. As AI deals with data, you need to know how to make decisions based on data. Data-driven thinking so to speak. It is fully fine to get a discrete AI leadership coach in the back who teaches you to become that data-driven decision maker, but in the end you need to in this team. As a tip, get a master of psychology graduate on your side as a personal assistant. They have year long experience in data-driven decision making and are used to make the unmeasurable measurable.
#7 Project Manager specialized in AI
It is funny that AI projects often have no project manager. Many try to use SCRUM for AI projects, but this often fails. This AI project manager plays, next to you, a super important role in this whole endeavor. For your first AI projects, this role should be bought-in.
The AI project manager knows business, but also data, process management and project management. He or she will always make sure that everyone will stay on track, keep the troops together and will be go-to person for every team member. AI project managers are rare and cost more than normal project managers. Do not take existing project managers from your company and just hope that “they will be able to do it”. Saving money on this role always will come back to you in a negative way.
#Data Analyst
This sounds like a fancy term, but basically this role can be filled by every team member in your company. The role is to look at existing data and get excited by what it might reveal. Just imagine following scenario: You have an excel sheet with 50 columns (each column showing one data source). People in your company, probably domain experts in their field, will very shortly form an opinion what problem you have in your company (e.g. need of forecasting, prediction) and how you can use this data to solve it. A data scientist might be able to build you a model, but he or she will never understand the bigger picture of what these data mean for you, how they are created and how they relate to each other.
#Data Engineer
Most time in an AI project is spend on so called data engineering. This role helps to get, pre-process and process the data, before the data gets analyzed or modelled. If you have small data sets, the data engineer might just change the commas to dots to merge European and US data sets, but if you have terabyte of data, this job can get complicated pretty fast. This role is absolutely key in your project. And do not expect any data scientist to be able to do this “additionally”. On the one hand they might feel offended, but on the other hand they might not know what to do. Furthermore just imagine you want to solve real-time optimization problems. Then the data engineer needs to know a lot about databases, data base management, search and sort strategies and everything surrounding this topic.
# Applied Machine Learning Engineer
Cassie Kozyrkov, one of the leading AI voices in Google, suggest to put this role on the list, too. An applied machine learning engineer does not create algorithms or knows how they work in detail. This person knows all the software suites surrounding AI models and knows how to apply them and make them work in production. They will write a lot of code and try to make the whole system work. They will know their whole Machine Learning Pipeline and will be later the person who helps you bring the amazing models to life. According to Cassie, look for people with a high tolerance for failure, as his/ her job is mostly a black box. Others call this role also MLOps.
#Data Scientist
We all hope that data scientists are statistian, applied machine learning engineer and also know how to build deep learning models, but in reality this is seldom the case. Furthermore the qualifications of the person you are looking for is dependent on the problem you want to solve. People specialize on certain areas, e.g. natural language processing, self-driving cars, strategy optimization in banking. So before you hire a data scientist, develop with your team a few ideas what problem you actually want to solve.
There are of course many other roles, but these roles above are the key roles you need in the beginning. One further note: Do not waste your time on getting data science researchers for your first project. Your first project should use well documented and well-studied models. Do not start too fancy for your first project. Remember you want to reduce complexity to reduce risk. If over time you discover which kind of data you have and how well the existing out-of-the box algorithms work for you, then you can start looking for highly specialized researchers.
Selected AI Problem Types
In order to give you a better start for your AI brainstorming session, let us look at eight problem types which can be solved with AI solutions. This list is of course not finite or complete, but it covers big problems many companies face. Some might apply to you and some not, so pick the ones you also see in your company and develop them further with your team as potential “First AI project ideas”.
Real-Time Optimization
Real-time optimization (RTO) does not always have to be real real-time, but can also mean hours, but in general RTO tries to optimize processes for systems or machines on their own – continuously and autonomously. An example is the optimization of delivery roots for package delivery companies. But in general it is a way to enhance the performance of any system – model based and on its own.
Strategy Optimization
If you are in the banking, agriculture or media industry, you have probably heard of strategy optimization. In banking you have systematic trading or algorithmic trading, in agriculture you have optimized planting strategies and strategies for optimized watering (e.g. in rice fields) or in media you constantly optimize your schedule or articles to obtain highest views or clicks. In all three industries, optimizing your strategy is a huge part of your daily work. The amount of information is extreme high, changes constantly and the decision patterns are highly complex. Thus the human mind quickly reaches its limit by finding global maxima.
Predictive Analytics
Problems regarding precisions can be found in almost every industry. The target might be different, but the problem is the same. How can you predict important KPIs in your business using historic information? Many companies will start here as it is easy to understand and supporting machine learning models are very mature.
Predictive Maintenance
If a product or machine breaks, your customer or employee is dissatisfied and quickly – depending on the severity of your product or machine – in financial or physical danger. Are you selling system critical parts for machines? Are you responsible for developing motors or any high value, critical product for elevators, hospitals, industry? Then this is your category. Imagine you are selling elevators and you could predict when an elevator would stop functioning. This would be huge unique selling proposition.
Radical personalization
Radical personalization is driven by individualization. Customers expect that products fit to them and not they to the product. With the manifestation of industry 4.0 and smarter production systems, a radical personalization or individualization of products is possible. Many people think of personally branded sneakers, but also think of compression socks, heart valves, walking sticks and cars. Radical personalization is going to be a challenge for every customer facing industry.
Discover new anomalies
Anomaly detection is primarily a problem mass producing industries like automotive, pharma or telecommunication. If something goes wrong in the process of producing one million pills an hour or on the assembly lines of high-volume car manufacturers, the costs of failure are very quickly very high. Thus a faster process for discovering (or even predicting) anomalies can help to save a lot of money.
Forecasting
Forecasting is a sub-category of prediction and it tries to predict future events based on time series. That’s why it is called weather forecast and not weather prediction. Weather forecast always takes the course or progress of the weather and uses it to predict the future weather. If it would be weather prediction, it would just use distinct variables (pressure, temperature, humidity, wind…) to predict future weather.
Forecasting can be found in any industry.
Processing of unstructured data
The reason why data engineering is making up the most part of artificial intelligence is that the data is sadly only rarely already in the form the data scientist needs it. This has to do with the multitude of systems which are involved in creating the data. Just imagine the different kinds of data being crated in the transport and logistics industry? So many players in this process, so many different systems and technologies, so many different countries and languages. In industries like the logistics industry, processing the huge amount of unstructured data is one of the key problems.
How to select the your first AI project?
This chapter should give you a clear guidance on how to start your first project.
Rule #1: The project should be short and successful (max 3 months).
There is always skepticism for new ideas. And this skepticism or “naturally expected non-buy-in” needs to be addressed as a big risk for your first AI project. So try to find a project which can be realized within one quarter. Many companies plan from one quarter to another and you should be able to deliver good results so that a follow up project can easily be planned into the following quarter. This will keep up the momentum. Multi-quarter projects exponentially rise in complexity and you should always focus on lowering the complexity of your project wherever you can. Why? Because complexity means risk.
If this initial AI project fails, you might have lost the buy-in from key-management employees, staff and C-Level. So create a short, but tangible and successful AI project. In this way they will naturally ask for more.
Rule #2: The project has to create tangible value
This is not the time for playing around. If you want your employees and C-level to buy into the idea of artificial intelligence, you have to show them that AI can create value and not just waste money and time and ressources. So how do you create value? As discussed in chapter one, a company has three levels where it creates value:
- Voice of Customer
- Voice of Employee
- Voice of Business
Show clearly which dimension (Customer, Employee or Business) will be touched by your AI solution and show, expressed in cold cash, how much more value the new solution will deliver. I would advise to steer away from projects which might position the company better in the market or would “just” have strategic value, because this cannot be measured or clearly seen by the employees. We will describe in detail how to write an AI business case in the chapter “Process Management”, but for now I will just show you an example of how concrete your promise in value should be:
During FY 2021, the 1st Time Call Resolution Efficiency for New Customer Hardware Setup was 89% . This represents a gap of 4% from the industry standard of 93% that amounts to US $2,000,000 of an annualized cost impact. With our new AI improved call center software, we will be able to increase the Efficiency to 91% which will lower the annualized cost impact by $1,000,000.
Rule #3: Do not calculate the ROI for your first AI project.
Many people suggest to calculate ROI for your AI projects, which is great, but your first AI project should be an exception. Your first project has a big research component and many unknowns. In order to project costs, you need to know much time a project needs and how many hours people might work on them. But for your first AI project, all this projections would be vague and mostly meaningless assumptions. I do not mean to not do a rough project planning, but it will not be enough for a proper ROI projection.
Rule #4: Do not put your intern in charge of AI, because he had two courses of data science in university.
In order to deliver a successful AI project, you need an experienced team who knows data science, business, project management, data engineering and the whole machine learning pipeline. Thus work with credible external partners like Goldblum Consulting for the first project to ensure that the first project will be a success. The next chapter “How to build the best A.I. Team” will describe the roles of AI teams in detail.
Rule #5: Choose something company or industry specific
Always remember that every company or industry has its own problems and thus needs its own solutions. As a leader you can easily be the swayed to copy the solutions of others as you want to copy their success, but that might not be a good idea in general. Let me give you an example:
For this we will look at McKinsey Global Institute’s report called “The age of Analytics: competing in a data-driven world”. There, they analyzed which industries have which specific AI related problem. As it showed, the energy industry for example has a very high desire for forecasting (of energy consumption) but no desire for “radical personalization” or processing unstructured data, while the automotive industry was focusing on radical personalization and the agricultural industry on processing of unstructured data. As you see, each industry has their own focus, and within each industry, each company has its own share of problems. Thus finding your specific problem type might be a first step in brainstorming ideas for your first AI project. In the next section we will talk about eight major AI problem types.