What's Your StORy? Frances Sneddon

Name: Frances Sneddon

Employer: SIMUL8 Corporation

Job Title: Chief Technology Officer

INFORMS member since 2011

I chose to major in math, I’d always loved it and was good at problem solving. I knew math would give me lots of options for my first role as I was undecided exactly what I wanted to do. I took some classes in O.R. and got really excited, this was math applied to business. It was a real departure from the endless proofs I’d been doing, it was problem solving for business - I’d found my calling! I particularly loved simulation, it was the first time I’d been taught something that I could see the direct benefit of in the real world. I took an internship at SIMUL8 that summer and was hooked and have focused the rest of my career in OR/MS.

For me it’s using techniques that deliver ongoing business value and impact from data. It’s the ongoing part that I think is the critical difference between analytics and any other kind of analysis. I think one-off pieces of analysis are incredibly useful, but for me analytics is productionizing that analysis to turn it into a tool that can support decision making every day.

What was the last desktop software you purchased? In both our personal and business lives it's now the norm for software to be web based. It’s easy to see why: you can access your software from any device, frees you from the reliance on the IT department, and allows vendors to continually provide you the most up-to-date software. It was the latter that was particularly key for us and why as CTO I set the strategic goal of making SIMUL8 available on the web. We do major releases every quarter and we’ve got customers paying to be on the latest version that can’t access it for 2 years because that’s how long it takes IT to install it. That’s incredibly frustrating for our users. Web was the answer. Now we can give all users access to the latest version on whichever platform or device is best for them.

For the industry, we’re hoping this drives radical change. Analytics is moving with incredible speed and the maturity with which organizations are embracing analytics is step changing. Industry and software vendors need to innovate at a pace that matches our customer’s analytics innovation. Being on the web was the first critical technical step in several major innovations we have planned for SIMUL8. This opens up SIMUL8 to become an integrated part of your tech stack no matter what platform you’re on. That’s where we see the future of the market going, it’s about a collection of tools that are brought together to solve key business challenges, and making simulation accessible and adaptive enough to become a real-time operational decision-making tool.

The INFORMS Analytics Conference and the Roundtable meeting are the must-attend events I calendar in as soon as they’re announced. Both these events allow me to connect with other people in analytics and learn from their experience. I always come back from these events with notebooks full of new ideas, insights, and approaches to try.

I love to learn, I’m constantly reading, and I’m lucky in my role to attend many conferences of different types. I also learn from my teams. I believe as a leader it’s one of my main responsibilities to create the space for my teams to learn. It’s not totally altruistic, I get it back tenfold in what I learn from them.

I’ve been involved with INFORMS in a variety of ways for a long time, I always get incredible value from my membership - it is one memberships I never let lapse. Initially I engaged as a member reading the monthly magazines and attending conferences from WSC to the Annual Meetings and Analytics conferences, where I always learn something new at each. I then got more involved with a few committees, which has been so helpful in my career. Being part of the committees themselves have helped me build new skills, best of all they have helped me connect and build relationships across the community. The relationships of mentors and peers that I have built and been able to lean on have been invaluable in helping me learn and grow as a business leader. 

I completed Tough Mudder last year, it was horrendous and also amazing fun. I won’t be doing it again though!

I think it’s best I take the Fifth on that, my mom might read this!

Twitter and LinkedIn. Both are fantastic for connecting with people, I’ve made “social friends” on both platforms long before I met them face-to-face. Both platforms are also great for helping you filter out the vast noise of content to find the real gems. 

My weekends are all about family. We always have at least one “adventure” as the kids call it. The weekends are about making as many memories as we can for them.

“Nashville”! I know not exactly mentally stimulating, I loved that show though, the music, the on and off then on again romances. When “Games of Thrones” ends - that’s going to be really traumatic…