The Caterpillar Podcast gives you the dirt on the company, the people and of course the yellow iron.
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August 8, 2018
Morgan Vawter is Caterpillar’s chief analytics director with broad experience in the field of digital and analytics. Before joining Caterpillar in 2016, Morgan consulted for more than 40 Fortune 500 companies on analytics. On this edition of the Caterpillar Podcast, Morgan talks about the challenges and opportunities in digital and analytics.
In simple terms, why are data and analytics so important in our industry and to customers?
We really do see digital as an enabler to the business and analytics as well, and not just as a standalone business as itself. When we see growth and talk about growth, it’s all based on the ROI that we are seeing from the value and the potential ROI we see in the future from all the data that we’re collecting. No matter where they go, customers expect to be connected and expect to get value from that connectivity in terms of productivity, lower total cost of ownership, safety and profitability.
Growing up – you found your passion early with computers.
Growing up, I never felt like this isn’t something that girls do. I had a good mentor in my dad, but also a good, girl group of friends, so that really helped me move forward in a career field when there weren’t a lot of women in it. I was really fortunate to find something that I loved very early on.
You bring a lot of external perspective to Caterpillar having worked with a number of other companies in this field. What attracted you to join Caterpillar?
Once I learned about Caterpillar and the type of company it was, I was fascinated with the culture and how innovative it was. The company is culturally data-driven. Everyone from the CEO on down, facts and data are how we run the business. It’s also a very warm culture that wants to do the right thing, and we’re very strong with our Values. I tell people that’s one of the reasons I came here, is because you can’t fix culture. You can fix the strategy, but if there’s not the culture ready to accept it and drive it to success, it’s not going to work. So, that was one of the things appealing to me early on.
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