Apparently, today was a good day; sitting in her stunningly minimalist office, the only thing that disturbed her was the steady flash of lights as the computers processed people’s requests. Life was great, no one called her, and no one spoke, just the calming peace of her office, all while the money rolled in! She had already dealt with the old-fashioned buffoon Marley; now, she only had to tackle Scrooge. Carol’s Cars was the future. She would rule New York soon enough!
Ebeneezer woke with a start… What was wrong with the simple things? He and Marley had been friendly rivals for decades and never needed anything more than a pivot table or two. Now, that just wasn’t enough, but why? He needed to sleep properly in order to decide what to do next. That blasted Cratchit and his pathetic laptop skills were clearly to blame for his troubled sleep, he would have to have words with the cretin in the morning. He got himself a nice mug of cocoa (with rum – for his nerves) and went back to bed. Suddenly, a hearty and depressingly cheery figure appeared, taking Scrooge by surprise with a slap on his shoulder from behind, quicker than you could taxi for scrooge, he was on the streets of New York.
“The Ghost of Data Present I presume?” He thought. “Got it in one, that’s me, and boy have I got a show for you! I’m here to show you all the abundance at your fingertips. You can use the past to predict the future. Think bigger than a spreadsheet per month and you will see! You can move your business from Descriptive Analysis to Predictive Analysis.”
He approached a taxi as if to hail it, but suddenly he saw performance over time charts, average passenger counts, and journey length by borough. In his mind’s eye, it zoomed out, and he was looking down on New York from above and could see how that one Taxi and its past data aggregated up across the whole city! Bob could use Excel to build a data model. He saw how Carol’s Cars was doing it. It was automated and efficient. This is how she had dispatched Marley!
Scrooge saw that the present could be so much better if it were built on knowledge of the past. It was clear that Bob had not been doing a good enough job. He should have done all that modelling within Excel and started Ebeneezer’s Taxi’s moving forward instead of moaning and complaining about his laptop! It was better than anything Scrooge had had when he was starting! He turned around to tell the ghost that fact, but there was no one there, only the door to Ebeneezer’s Taxis.
A little anxious about what was to come, he put the key in the lock and opened the door. The main office was dark, with a skeletal figure pointing a long, bony finger to the stairs leading to his office. He saw a vision of Carol’s Cars’ future in his office. AI will revolutionise everything by allowing data to become transcendent, models become smarter and can prescribe solutions for your business challenges. Carol’s Cars uses full automation, from Taxi booking to planning where taxis will be needed based on what the AI prescribes.
Looking down the stairs, he saw Bob. This man sure likes to make an appearance, he thought to himself. Bob was frowning, almost crying, anxious that Scrooge might fire him. Smoke drifted up from Tiny Tim. Clearly, he was on his way to Silicon Heaven (where the calculators go).
It was eerily quiet; barely any calls were coming in. As he looked out of the window, his depot was full of taxis, unnervingly quiet for this time of year. Then there was a call; Bob had answered in Scrooge’s absence. The company was going under; some staff had been unpaid for weeks, fuel bills remained unpaid, the inefficiencies consumed Ebeneezer’s Taxis, and they were in the red. How could this happen?
Ebeneezer had to avoid ending up in the poor house with Marley. Ebeneezer knew what he had to do and how he could prevent this future being his future, but would he make that bold move?
#geordielife #achristmastale #dataliteracy #lessonsinbusiness
