[PaulHoule]

So I did a lot of business development in the 2010s in a space that involved: semantic web, lo/now code, schema-driven development, business rules, entity matching, "centaur" systems where people work together with ML systems to do work, etc.

There was the obvious choice of "analytics oriented" or "LoB oriented" with the complication that "centaur" and anything subjective like "entity matching" needs some analytics no matter what.

My take now is that you're basically right: overall the spend on LoB is bigger because it right on the path to delivering value whereas analytics are secondary... if you're going to get any value out of analytics you're still going to have to execute in the LoB to realize that value!

On the other hand, analytics might be an easier sell because the analytics system can be dropped on top of what's there and the "low code" capabilities could efficiently accelerate the process. Whereas, "rip and replace" on the LoB would be a huge commitment, anything missing from the new system is a dealbreaker, and if it has to interface with the old system the old system is likely to diffuse the benefits of low code. (with the caveat that maybe a framework that implements "strangler fig" might break the impasse)

One thing that was seductive at the time was being saturated with ads and conferences and sponsored blog posts and such about analytics, but you have to realize this: if something is heavily advertised people want to sell it, not buy it That is, advertising is a bad smell.

[tiazm]

I like the analytics vs LoB oriented framing. In my experience, analytics is necessary to evaluate quality and guide change, but value only materializes once decisions are executed in the LoB systems. That mismatch makes analytics easy to layer on, but hard to own.

What I keep wondering is whether there will ever be a point where analytics is perceived as first order value from day one, rather than as something you add later once the system already exists.

[PaulHoule]

Well, in retrospect I think had we realized the system we were thinking about it might have been what you say, a "low/no code" system which has analytics baked into it at the core with the intention of always running with closed feedback loops -- I think it matters more than ever in the age of AI.

Send me an email and I can share you some slide decks from that time period.

[tiazm]

sure! just sent you an email