An overview of how top performing businesses strategically embrace analytics, and analytical sophistication as a competitive differentiator over their underperforming peers

1. Experts agree: Analytics = PerformanceA Recent MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM Intelligent Enterprise Survey Highlights Key Insights Into Today’s Top Performing Businesses Insight: The data deluge is real Two thirds of analytically non-sophisticated organizations are overwhelmed with data and struggle to use it to achieve results Insight: The Top Performing Businesses Use Analytics - Top Performers are 3 times more likely to be sophisticated in the use of analytics than lower performers Insight: Analytics is a Competitive Differentiator – Top performing organizations are significantly more likely to say their analytics differentiates them from competitors Insight: Top Performers Tend Toward Analytics Over Instincts - Non-analytically sophisticated organizations are relying on instincts to make decisions and thus are performing more poorly Source: IBM Institute for Business Value | MIT Sloan Management Review – Special Report Analytics: The New Path to Value – Fall 2010, “10 Data Points: Information and Analytics at Work” – Fall 2010 MIT Sloan Management Review Embracing a strategic analytical approachenables clients to tackle the data deluge by developing an analytics-driven framework and capability to unlock significant value and sustainable performance improvement

2. What Separates Analytically Sophisticated Businesses From Underperforming PeersAssume all complex businesses have similar information system capability Lagging Performers Top Performers Analytics only used for Annual Budget / LRP. Resource-intensive one-off data requests are typical Analytics capability is a competitive differentiator, embedded to sustainable top-level performance Sustaining Performance Making Decisions Performance Lagging Performers Lagging Performers Lagging Performers Top Performers Top Performers Top Performers Underinvestment in analytical resources, disjointed data gathering & performance review Overwhelmed by data deluge, decisions based on instincts; analytical capacity limited and siloed Decision process slowed by “analysis paralysis” Effectiveness of performance review s inconsistent Embrace and strategically invest in integrated data analysis. Systemic approach to performance review Analytical Cadence translates real-time performance insights and sources of variance All decisions based on analytic insights. Accountability to performance targets embedded into review Drawing Insights Using Data Analytical Sophistication