Embracing Analytics and Crunching the Way to Victory
“Employees hired for their expertise with numbers or trained to recognize their importance are armed with the best evidence and the best quantitative tools. As a result, they make the best decisions.”
“Although numerous organizations are embracing analytics, only a handful have achieved this level of proficiency. But analytics competitors are the leaders in their varied fields—consumer products, finance, retail, and travel and entertainment among them. ”
Thomas H. Davenport wrote an excellent article called “Competing on Analytics” on Harvard Business Review. Davenport discussed that at one end , “traditional companies, departments manage analytics —number-crunching functions select their own tools and train their own people. But that way, chaos lies.” At the other end, “the most proficient analytics practitioners don’t just measure their own navels—they also help customers and vendors measure theirs.”
Analytics is only just about generating insights and delivering your insights to people. To make your data-driven innovation sustainable and lead to new competitive advantage, organizations need to revise analytics approaches and “to stock their personnel larders with fresh people.”
