With the growing popularity of machine learning and artificial intelligence, creating a data science program is a key initiative at most companies today. However, it’s not always clear to executives how they can deliver a return on investments in data science. To explain this, we invited an expert who has spent most of his career in the data science trenches and has a clear-minded perspective on how to deliver ROI with data science.

Alan Jacobson is the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) of Alteryx, driving key data initiatives and accelerating digital business transformation for the Alteryx global customer base. As CDAO, Jacobson leads the company’s data science practice as a best-in-class example of how a company can get maximum leverage out of its data and the insights it contains, responsible for data management and governance, product and internal data, and use of the Alteryx Platform to drive continued growth.

Prior to joining Alteryx, Alan held a variety of leadership roles at Ford Motor Company across engineering, marketing, sales and new business development; most recently leading a team of data scientists to drive digital transformation across the enterprise. As an Alteryx evangelist at Ford, Alan spent many years leveraging the Alteryx Platform across the company and witnessed first-hand the impact a culture of analytics can have on the bottom line and what it takes to succeed as a data-driven enterprise.