by Angela Guess
Rajeev Ronanki, Ashish Verma, David Pierce, and Mark Shilling of Deloitte recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Perhaps Ann Winblad, senior partner at technology venture capital firm Hummer-Winblad, said it best: ‘Data is the new oil.’ Against this backdrop, it seems almost illogical that few companies are making the investments needed to harness data and analytics at scale. Where we should be seeing systemic capabilities, sustained programs, and focused innovation efforts, we see instead one-off studies, toe-in-the-water projects, and exploratory investments.”
They go on, “It’s time to take a new approach to data, one in which CIOs and business leaders deploy the talent, data usage and management models, and infrastructure required to enable repeatable results and scale. By “industrializing” analytics in this way, companies can finally lay the foundation for an insight-driven organization that has the vision, underlying technology capabilities, and operating scale necessary to take advantage of data’s full potential.”
The article continues, “Beyond enabling scale and predictability of outcomes, industrializing analytics can also help companies develop a greater understanding of data’s possibilities and how to achieve them. Any effort to industrialize analytics should set forth the data agenda and delineate its strategic aspirations. This agenda can help define a company’s vision for data usage and governance, and anchor efforts around key performance indicators that matter to the business. Moreover, it can help line up stakeholder support by clearly describing how an overarching analytics strategy might benefit individual groups within the enterprise. Demos and proofs of concept that illuminate how analytics, dashboards, and advanced data analysis techniques can help drive strategy and communicate intent can be especially powerful here.”
Photo credit: Deloitte