Data Mining Book Review: The Value of Business Analytics

Today’s book review is about The Value of Business Analytics – Identifying The Path to Profitability, from Evan Stubbs. I won’t keep any suspense: the book is excellent!

Today’s book review is about The Value of Business Analytics – Identifying The Path to Profitability, from Evan Stubbs. I won’t keep any suspense: the book is excellent! It’s a must have for any person trying to apply analytics within a company. The book is published by Wiley/SAS, but don’t worry, there is no promotion of SAS tools. The book is clearly about going from analytics to action. In other words, how do you transform analytics results into an operational process in the company. Such kind of books exist for a long time in the field of Business Intelligence, but not in the data mining area. Out of the Analytics at Work, I cannot think of books that answer the question of industrializing analytics. I have been waiting for Stubbs’ book for years, and you will understand why below.

After a short introduction, the book is divided into chapters with the following business analytics topics: importance, delivery, value, communication, execution plan and measurement framework. The final chapter brings everything together. Stubbs clearly shows the importance of business analytics (BA) and how it is useful for competitive advantage. Stubbs not only explains why, but how to find these advantages. The book goes one step further from Analytics at Work, by providing methodologies and procedures to achieve what is advised by the author. In addition to the process of making value from analytics, Stubbs define the analytics team members, one by one. To be noted, the excellent and comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.

The presence of checklists for BA managers are very appreciated. Stubbs emphasizes on the importance of communication when dealing with BA. Fundamental aspects of communications are explained with focus on BA. The funny thing with Stubbs’ book is that I can find myself in several of his examples. The Value of Business Analytics is definitely THE book for managing analytics projects. After reading his book, it’s clear for me that Stubbs has a lot of experience in the field. I will finish with a quote that summarizes the book: “Value is created only when action is taken, not when insight is generated.”