Instead of diluting brand identity through an endless pursuit of personalization, organizations should take time to understand their customers and what they value.

The 2018 Data & Analytics Global Executive Study and Research Report by MIT Sloan Management Review finds that innovative, analytically mature organizations make use of data from multiple sources: customers, vendors, regulators, and even competitors. The report, based on MIT SMR’s eighth annual data and analytics global survey of over 1,900 business executives, managers, and analytics professionals, explores companies leading the way with analytics and customer engagement.

An infographic based on the 2018 Data & Analytics Report by MIT Sloan Management Review illustrates how companies can better engage with customers using analytics.

Data has become a key input for driving growth, enabling businesses to maintain a competitive edge. Given the growing importance of data to companies, how should managers measure its value? An increasing number of institutions, academics, and business leaders have begun tackling the valuation problem to help organizations realize more value from their data.

Bad data is the norm. Every day, businesses send packages to customers, managers decide which candidate to hire, and executives make long-term plans based on data provided by others. When that data is incomplete, poorly defined, or wrong, there are immediate consequences: angry customers, wasted time, and added difficulties in the execution of strategy. Getting in front on data quality is crucial, and presents a terrific opportunity to improve business performance.

Analytics teams are often underfunded, misunderstood, and starved for talent. Extracting business value from data depends on nurturing the development and effectiveness of these teams — not just in terms of finding talent, but also in terms of getting leaders up to speed on how to use the insights analytics teams produce.

Plummeting data acquisition costs have been a big part of the surge in business analytics. We have much richer samples of data to use for insight. But more data doesn’t inherently remove sampling bias; in fact, it may make it worse.

Big Data is moving to a new stage of maturity — one that promises even greater business impact and industry disruption over the course of the coming decade. Organizations are now combining the agility of Big Data processes with the scale of AI capabilities to accelerate the delivery of business value.

On March 15, 2017, MIT SMR held a webinar to share insights from our report, “Analytics as a Source of Business Innovation.” Many participants asked questions during the webinar that we didn’t have time for, so we decided to answer them in blog format instead. This post is the second set of responses.

On March 15, 2017, MIT SMR held a webinar to share insights from our report, “Analytics as a Source of Business Innovation,” which summarizes our findings about the increased ability to innovate with analytics and its benefits across industries. Many participants asked questions during the webinar that we didn’t have time for, so we’ll answer some of them in blog format instead.

The 2017 Data & Analytics Report by MIT Sloan Management Review finds that the percentage of companies deriving competitive advantage from analytics increased for the first time in four years. Incorporating survey results and interviews with practitioners and scholars, the report finds that companies’ increasing ability to innovate with analytics is driving a resurgence of strategic benefits from analytics across industries. The report is based, in part, on MIT SMR’s seventh annual data and analytics global survey, which includes responses from 2,602 business executives, managers, and analytics professionals from organizations located around the world.

IoT promised, and delivered, a data deluge. But is the data any good? Survey results from MIT SMR’s recent internet of things research suggest that it is — but the most value goes to those who got into IoT early and have years of experience under their belt. The message to those considering IoT projects: Don’t wait.

Analytics requires structured data, but we may be introducing errors in the processing we use to produce it. An alternative: Do more up-front structuring before we even collect the data so that less processing is needed.

Managers can guard against data deceit affecting their decision making by asking questions about the quality of their data, the strength of their models, and the assumptions behind their analysis.

In a video panel and Q&A, MIT SMR editors discuss key insights from a recently completed series of in-depth case studies on how prominent organizations are using data and analytics to transform their operations. They review Intermountain Healthcare, GE, Nedbank, and the City of Amsterdam’s efforts to become more data driven. This set of diverse organizations offers a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities associated with becoming a data-driven organization.

South African finance leader Nedbank is using data and analytics as a way to help the bank’s clients better understand their business. And the more data-oriented the bank becomes, the better able it will be to turn its developing prowess on itself. As the bank dives deeper into analytics, the same data it’s using for clients can help Nedbank better understand its own organization, employees, suppliers, and more.

Organizations across the business spectrum are awakening to the transformative power of data and analytics. They are also coming to grips with the daunting difficulty of the task that lies before them. It’s tough enough for many organizations to catalog and categorize the data at their disposal and devise the rules and processes for using it. It’s even tougher to translate that data into tangible value. But it’s not impossible, and many organizations, in both the private and public sectors, are learning how.

A case study by MIT Sloan Management Review, “A Data-Driven Approach to Customer Relationships,” details how the South African bank Nedbank is using its rich access to a trove of transactional data from credit card use — from the time of transactions and size of purchases to retailer locations, and even specific details like the age, gender, race, marital status, and income bracket of some users — to help merchants make strategic decisions to better serve those customers.

An infographic provides highlights of MIT SMR‘s 2016 Internet of Things report and illustrates the three key areas business leaders need to address in order to realize the IoT value proposition.

Analytics capabilities can greatly expand a company’s ability to innovate — but what do you do when the talent you need just isn’t available? Agribusiness giant Syngenta, faced with an insurmountable analytics talent bottleneck, turned to crowdsourcing. Using a series of contests, it outsourced the development of a set of award-winning analytics tools to improve its decision making — and learned, in the process, some key factors supporting successful crowdsourcing.