Analytics Capability Landscape: The Importance of Decisions

It’s clear when you analyze analytic capabilities that there are three main reasons people use analytics:

It’s clear when you analyze analytic capabilities that there are three main reasons people use analytics:

• A need to report on some aspect of the organization
• A need to monitor the organization’s behavior or performance
• A need for the organization to make data-driven decisions

As part of my recently completed research on the analytic capability landscape, we did an interesting straw poll.  We asked those attending a webinar on the topic which of these was the business goal for their analytic efforts today and how did they see that changing in the next 12-24 months. The split is shown in an excerpt from the infographic at right. Today the split is pretty even with reporting and monitoring coming in at 37% each with deciding – making decisions – slightly under at 27%. This matches my experience – lots of companies are still focused on reporting, many have moved on to dashboards and performance monitoring as their focus while a growing number are explicitly focused on decision-making.

But look what they said about tomorrow’s focus – an overwhelming shift to decision-making with nearly 70% reporting decision-making as their expected focus. Two thirds of current reporters and 90% of current monitors said they would be focusing on decision-making in 12-24 months.

This shift is reflected in the approach I recommend in the research for selecting analytics capabilities, one that I will outline in the next few posts:

• Decision-led
• Role-centric
• Style-based

The research is now published as a report – The Analytics Capabilities Landscape Research Report  – and an associated Infographic. Register now to download this free report and infographic.