You have the data, you have the tools. What now? Today's voluminous data and highly sophisticated tools can deliver better insights to end users and significant competitive advantages to organizations. What's more, these insights can be embedded in the tools that end users access every day.

But where do you start? How do you begin to decide what to do first? Real world use cases can provide inspiration if you are looking for a place to start, or a way to get unstuck with your analytics program.

This week we are taking a look at some real world use cases that can do just that. From healthcare, to child welfare, to establishing a Center of Excellence, our guest on A2 radio this week has seen them all. Marie Lowman's new book is a collection of case studies of analytics that can be applied across any number of organizations, although these specific case studies are have been implemented in government.

Lowman told me one of her goals with this new book, A Practical Guide to Analytics for Governments: Using Big Data For Good. She said she really to transform the word "analytics" from a word that some users may find intimidating into a word that is part of everyday conversation within organizations. The transformation happens because users become comfortable with the word analytics and understand what analytics can do for them.

Lowman demonstrates this approach -- embedded analytics in the real world -- through this series of case studies. Each case study is written by people who have years of experience in government.

In the forward to the book Lowman writes, "It's not [a book] written by a bunch of PhD statisticians and data scientists." Rather, the book is written by the people with the domain knowledge to turn data into insights. It is written to show how analytics that are embedded inside an organization's processes can radically improve what can be accomplished by the organization. It's written to show how this voluminous data can be used for Good with a capital G.

We're excited to have Lowman join us this week and take us through a few of the many case studies included in her new book, and look forward to hearing about some best practices she can share with us about how to create the type of analytics practice that offers these kinds of results.