How can I get my organization started with business analytics?
There are a set of issues you have to consider before getting started.
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Do you have the leadership commitment in place? It is important that you have the leaders of your organization committed to act based on the results of analytics. No action means no gain. Therefore, you must guarantee that all the decision makers believe in the process and are willing to act according to the recommendations they get.
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Can you identify an area of your business that could benefit from the use of analytics? You should try to focus in an area that would provide faster results so you can start seeing the benefits of using analytics in the short term.
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Can you collect the necessary data to do business analytics? Data is King for business analytics. Only with data that captures the essence of the business problem you are addressing, you can expect to succeed in the use of business analytics.
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Do you have the skills in your organization (or are you willing to get the required skills) to develop and implement business analytics? Outstanding performers can get the most out of even the simplest business analytics tool in the market. On the other hand, poor performers can not shine even with the best business analytics tool in the market.
As you can see, everything starts and ends with people. People are your most valuable asset in implementing an analytics solution.
Once you have all the pre-requisites described above, you can follow this four-phase process to get started with business analytics:
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Plan by answering the following questions: what business areas can benefit the most from business analytics in the short and long term? What information is needed to measure success? What data is available?
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Prototype by first choosing an area that will show immediate benefit and that has data available. Second, you must identify the business and technical requirements. Next, you must start collecting and analyzing data to see if any trend or pattern emerges.
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Select the tools to use. You should try different vendors if possible. The idea here is to combine different solutions to analyze your business problem from different points of view and create an optimal overall solution that can meet a variety of your needs.
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Implement the business analytics solution in the area of your choice.
As a final note, I want to stress one more time the importance of People in the success of a business analytics implementation. You need the Right People to analyze your data and produce recommendations and you need the Right People to act based on those recommendations. In short: You need the Right People to succeed as an analytics competitor.