Crunchy questions for sticky issues – Using analytics to outsmart competitors

A new book from Deloitte cuts to the core of analytics excellence.

Are you prepared to see analytics in all its grubby, geeky, potentially revolutionary glory? It all starts with asking crunchy questions to tackle your most sticky business issues — and ends with getting answers you can trust.

Many business leaders already know the inherent value of analytics insights for improving operations and driving smarter decisions. But amid all that potential, companies continue struggling to build truly fact-based cultures. They talk a good game, but when you look deep inside their organizations, there’s not much under the hood.

The benefits of analytics seem clear, and many executives can rattle off a list of potential gains. Cost isn’t the issue. The best analytics investments are self-funding. And there’s no lack of affordable technology. So what’s missing?

Learn more about the practical steps to jump-start business analytics efforts that deliver uncommon insights and breakout value in our new book, Crunchy questions for sticky issues: Using analytics to outsmart competitors.

Download the book . . . Crunchy questions for sticky issues

Do you have any questions? Contact Ashleigh Theophanides at Deloitte South Africa at atheophanides@deloitte.co.za

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Filed under: Executive Leadership, Information Technology, analytics, benefits, business analytics, business issues, Deloitte, improving operations, leadership, management, technology, value

Deloitte Tech Trends 2011 – Real Analytics – Shifting from business hindsight to insight to foresight

Real Analytics is the ninth of ten articles I am publishing from the Deloitte Tech Trends 2011 series

In 2010, many organizations began to see information automation outweigh business process automation as their highest priority area. In the reset economy, analytics offered improved visibility to drive operational efficiencies, as well as a platform for growth by addressing heart-of-the-business questions that could guide decisions, yield new insights and help predict what’s next. It seemed like a no-brainer. But companies quickly discovered that the journey is complicated – requiring a clear analytics vision aligned to the business strategy, several layers of supporting capabilities and the fortitude to embed analytical thinking across multiple facets of the organization. In 2011, leading organizations are launching broad initiatives with executive-level sponsorship, ready and eager to achieve their vision via real analytics.

Data volumes continue to explode, doubling every 14 months. Regulators are demanding deeper insight into risk, exposure and public responsiveness. Public and private organizations alike are feeling increased pressure to achieve profitable growth. New signals are evolving that contain crucial information about companies and markets – including sensor-laden assets, unstructured internal data and external sentiments shared via social computing. Cisco estimates that the amount of data flowing over the internet each year will reach 667 exabytes by 2013. The magnitude and complexity of global businesses have made it even more diffi cult for leaders to uncover hidden insight.

The crunchy questions haunting the business require a combination of hindsight, foresight and insight. By investing in a balance of information management, performance management and advanced analytics, organizations can make small steps, smartly made to capture measurable results. These can span from improving fragmented customer relationships by analyzing omni-channel interactions, to providing an integrated enterprise view of risk and finance. This is the essence of real analytics: delivering business value through the continuous build-out of core information disciplines.

While getting the right answers is critical, many organizations don’t normally know the right questions to ask to get there. Powerful new tools and supporting infrastructure have removed most technical constraints, but analytics initiatives continue to suffer from the lack of a clear vision and commitment to embed analytics-based approaches into how work is performed. Real analytics can add knowledge, fact-based predictions and business prescriptions – but only if applied to the right problems, and only if the resulting insight is pushed into action.

You can’t drive your car with only the rear view mirror – equivalent to historical reporting. You use the view out of the windshield and the dashboard gauges – Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and performance dashboards. In fact, many drivers take advantage of navigation systems fed by GPS to see the road ahead and direct the next turns. That’s like going from descriptive analytics to predictive and prescriptive. That’s moving from hindsight to insight to foresight for the business.

Read the full article . . . . Deloitte Tech Trends 2011 – Real Analytics

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Filed under: Information Technology, advanced analytics, analytics, Dealoitte, fact-based predictions, foresight, hindsight, information automation, insight, visibility

Deloitte Human Capital Trends 2011 – Workforce Analytics

Workforce Analytics – Up the Ante is the first of a series of ten topics we are presenting from the Deloitte Human Capital Trends – 2011 article.

Given the importance of talent and people, it’s time to move beyond instinct, gut, and tribal wisdom in making workforce decisions. If you’re not using workforce data and analytics to drive your talent decisions, you may be behind the curve — and at risk of losing your competitive edge. As HR works with business leaders on the front lines, analytics are becoming critical in making more effective decisions related to workforce planning and recruitment, compensation, development programs, and deploying critical talent.

Workforce analytics involves using statistical models that integrate internal and external data to predict future workforce and talent-related behavior and events. These models help companies focus limited resources on critical talent decisions. For example, models have been demonstrated to predict the likelihood that a particular employee will leave in the next six months — and can provide likely reasons for the prediction.

Read the full article . . . . Workforce analytics – Up the Ante

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Filed under: Talent & Human Capital, analytics, compensation, Deloitte, development programs, recruitment, talent, workforce, Workforce analytics, workforce planning

Deloitte Tech Trends 2011 – Increasing the use of information and analytics

This is the first of 10 articles I will be publishing on Deloitte’s Tech Trends 2011 series. Titled “Visualisation”, this article focuses on organisations increasing the use of information and analytics.

Visualisation – Tech Trends 2011

Enterprises move into 2011 with information at the forefront of their agendas. According to a recent Gartner survey, increasing the use of information and analytics is one of the top three business priorities. Data volumes continue to explode, as unstructured content proliferates via collaboration, productivity and social channels. And while organizations are making headway on enterprise information management and broad analytics solutions, much potential insight is buried within static reports that are accessible only by a small fraction of the organization.

This static, tabular approach runs counter to fundamental patterns of human thinking; our brains have been tuned to recognize shapes, detect movement and use touch to explore surroundings and make connections. Thus, the true value of business intelligence is often lost as companies struggle to communicate complicated concepts and empower more stakeholders.

Visualization refers to the innovative use of images and interactive technology to explore large, high-density datasets. Through multi-touch interfaces, mobile device views and social network communities, organizations are enabling users to see, explore and share relationships and insights in new ways. Spatial and temporal context add physical location and sequencing to the analysis over time, allowing patterns to be uncovered based on the source, flow and evolution of information. Intuitive touch or gesture-based drill-downs and on-the-fly relationship mapping add immediacy to the analysis, encouraging manipulation and higher-order understanding instead of static or passive views.

Though a long-established discipline, visualization deserves a fresh look in 2011, partly due to the evolution of the underlying tools. In-memory databases and distributed MapReduce processing now allow trillions of records and petabytes of data to be sorted, joined and queried. Visualization suites complement business intelligence and analytics platforms, offering rich graphics, 3-D perspectives, interactivity and usability on par with leading consumer experiences – often with deployment channels on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. 

Another difference in 2011 is the rich potential represented by unstructured data, whereby organizations can tap into millions of internal emails, instant messages and documents, as well as trillions of Facebook objects (100 billion page views per day), Twitter tweets (90 million per day⁴), text messages, blogs and other content of potential concern to the enterprise. In the face of so many loose connections and non-intuitive correlations, visualization is proving to be an excellent mechanism to make sense of unstructured data and feed it into decision making and process improvement activities.

Download the full article . . . . Visualisation – Tech Trends 2011

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Filed under: Information Technology, analytics, business intelligence, business priorities, Deloitte, enterprise information management, information, information management, technology trends, unstructured content

Supply Chain Analytics: How Hard Should You Squeeze?

Can advanced analytics extract additional value from your supply chain, or do approaches based on traditional metrics deliver the best ROI?

Every company with a supply chain devotes a fair amount of energy to making sure it adds value. But new tools and disciplines now make it possible to drill deeper into supply chain data in search of savings. Is more analysis better?

Download the full debate – Supply Chain Analytics: How Hard Should You Squeeze?

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Filed under: Consumer and Industrial, Industry And Consumer, analytics, Deloitte, manufacturing, retail, supply chain