Ruth McCartney, CEO of McCartney Multimedia and stepsister to the famous Beatle, spoke as part of the Paul A. Grosch Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 19, 2016.
Ruth McCartney shares her expert insights on Big Data and analytics.
Big Data is having a big moment. More than 90% of the data in the world was created in just the last two years. It’s cutting billions in energy costs, decoding DNA to find cures and anticipating hurricanes. Big Data predicted the Zika virus and the Ebola outbreak. It even predicted the winner of the 2012 presidential election.
With the power of massive data sets and advanced analytics, experts say that companies with savvy finance departments will better anticipate customer and supplier demand, predict sales and profits under hundreds of different scenarios, detect fraud and drastically cut the time it takes to close the books at the end of each quarter. Not surprisingly, accounting and finance graduates with data analytics expertise are in high demand.
“There is a new generation of accountants coming up who can be impactful in making sense of all this data that’s being collected,” said Ruth.
Ruth was introduced to data as a young girl in the mid-1960s when the Beatles were first becoming popular. She was essentially managing all of their fan mail by collecting names, addresses, cities and states as a way to keep in touch with them. She remembers John Lennon used to call them “customers” instead of fans.