Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

INNOVATION PILLAR

The last pillar in our BASP framework is innovation. Innovation sounds like common sense and is even a bit trite; however, we are continually surprised at how many business analytics functions fail in this area. It seems to be too easy for a business analytics function to fall into the trap of providing the same information to internal customers because it’s what has been provided historically or because someone asked for it monthly eight months ago—yet the analyst cannot explain, specifically, whether and how the information is being used by the business today.

As a point of illustration, when we interviewed more than 100 companies regarding their business analytics practices for this book, about 85% described their analytical techniques as innovative; however, only 15% described their business analytics function as “innovative” in meeting the needs of the business. So it seems as if there may be an overemphasis on new and innovative analytical techniques, yet not enough innovation and creativity in how business analytics can help the enterprise. In our view, this is a missed opportunity and one that requires action by the business analytics community. Specifically, innovation in how we work with our business partners should be an ongoing activity. There are many ways to be innovative, and we will discuss them in more detail in Chapter 17, “Analytics and Innovation.”