Here is a useful ‘competing with analytics’ checklist

Some organisations have become very good at collecting, analysing and acting on data and others are struggling in building the culture for data or establishing an efficient platform to remain competitive.

The good news is that the technology is making it easier for organisations to adopt analytics, however, the vision and how this is used and adopted into business processes could be an area of focus.

This is as much a technical problem, as a change management problem.

Analytics for many is a source of competitive advantage. I have highlighted below, aspects of analytics that are ahead of the competition. Some of these may be on your data roadmap. How many can you check off, and is there anything that I have missed?

1. Fact-based decision making is part of the culture and regularly communicated by senior executives.

2. You apply rigorous analysis not only on the core business but also on a range of functions such as human resources, property, and support functions.

3. The organisation can leverage a range of metrics to measure business performance, but also uses proprietary metrics for use in key business processes.

4. Data owners review data quality on a regular basis and each metric has a confidence score.

5. You share data and insights with customers and suppliers.

6. You have an analytics roadmap with a commitment to building further capability over multiple years.

7. The organisation has adopted a “test and learn” culture based on numerous small experiments.

8. Analytics is shared in the annual report and in discussions with external stakeholders.

9. Every function and department employs analytics and it is also managed at an enterprise level.

10. Senior executives are focused on the development and maintenance of analytics

11. You hire people with the best analytical skills, not just people with analytical skills.

I hope you found this useful. I will be posting regularly so stay tuned. If you want additional content, check out Analytics Roundtable, to stay up to date with the latest technology and chat with others.