MIT Sloan Management Review

A data and analytics survey conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review in partnership with SAS Institute Inc. found a strong correlation between the value companies say they generate using analytics and the amount of data they use. The creators of the survey identified five levels of analytics sophistication, with those at Level 5 being most sophisticated and innovative. These analytical innovators in Level 5 had several defining traits. This article explores those traits.

Some companies have a counting problem when it comes to data. Revenues, customers and leads can be counted the same way by all managers…or not. Director of MIT’s Center for Information System Research discusses the growing interest in data analytics and how one company that was in the red dealt with business unit heads all of whom were reporting profits.

Kathleen Long is using a combination of behavioral analytics, Bayesian engineering and big data to help companies better determine and mitigate business risk.

These days, lots of people in business are talking about “big data.” But how do the potential insights from big data differ from what managers generate from traditional analytics?

Today’s companies process more than 60 terabytes of information annually, about 1,000 times more than a decade ago. But how well are companies managing the data and capitalizing on the opportunities it presents?

To answer these questions, seven IT research centers studied data-related activities at 26 corporations and large nonprofit organizations. The research shows that while the IT unit is competent at storing and protecting data, it cannot make decisions that turn data into business value.

A lot of the talk about analytics focuses on its potential to provide huge insights to company managers. But analyst Simon Robinson of 451 Research says that on the more basic level, the global conversation is about big data’s more pedestrian aspects: how do you store it, and how do you transmit it?

The state of Massachusetts is a major U.S. center of big data, says Stephen O’Leary, an M&A advisor with Aeris Partners and executive committee member of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. It’s only poised to get hotter.

“The biggest predictor of success…has been when there’s a strong business sponsor involved,” says Randy Bean, co-founder of NewVantage Partners. Broad-based organizational support usually follows when the business sees how analytics will improve the top and bottom line.

Our new survey suggests that companies experienced in analytics use are increasingly gaining competitive advantage — but their approaches vary.

Businesses’ ability to process numbers in “well-behaved rows and columns” goes back 40 years, notes K. Ananth Krishnan, chief technology officer of Tata Consultancy Services, one of the largest companies in India. Figuring out how to mine and process the information in text, video, and audio is the new frontier.

Almost all executives want more and faster information, and almost all companies are racing to provide it. What many of them overlook, though, is that the real aim should be not faster information but faster decision making — and those aren’t the same things.

Many think that the way to capture value through relationship marketing is to focus on the “good” customers and get rid of the “bad” ones. But there is more to best practice relationship management than maximizing revenues on individual customers and minimizing costs to serve. This article provides guidelines for companies that want to improve the value of customer relationships. For most companies, the transition to a relationship-based approach will require a significant shift in practice.

Companies have been trained to think about data all wrong, say Attivio’s Ali Riaz and Sid Probstein. “Analytics don’t have to be based on super-precise data,” they say. “The report doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to capture the behavior, not the totality of it.”

How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform information into insight and then action. Findings and recommendations from the first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Global Executive study.

During the e-boom of the 1990s, academics, consultants, executives and investors alike claimed that e-procurement, and its increasingly central role in supply-chain management, would revolutionize how future business-to-business practices would take place: Efficiencies would be improved and procurement costs reduced; the flow of information along the supply chain enhanced; strategic

Most companies today are using precious little of the computing power available to them through the machines and software they already own. PCs, servers and mainframes all sit idle much of time, while the people who operate them are away from the office or the plant.

Managers must think about and manage data differently in order to take advantage of this underutilized resource.

Current models of organizational strategy and structure fail to meet the challenges of the information age. Based on field study, the authors conceptualize an architecture, or guide, for virtual organizing that focuses on the importance of knowledge and intellect in creating value. Information technology lies at the heart of this business model for the twenty-first century.

In recent years, there have been calls and prescriptions for business transformation.1 There has also been growing pressure for radical change in how the IT function is organized and managed. Rockart et al. captured the consequences of an agenda for reform in the IT function, and Cross et al.

Three objectives — improving IS, enhancing business performance, and generating new revenue — that can help a company assess outsourcing.