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Are You Leveraging Analytic Insights to Make Better Decisions?

As companies hurtle through the digital age, the onslaught of data — both internal and external, structured and unstructured — has overwhelmed many organizations. While executives understand that transforming this data into analytic insights should enable them to make better decisions, thereby improving revenue and ROI, many acknowledge that harnessing and leveraging that data is??a??struggle analytically, technically, and organizationally.

Based on our work with companies across industries, The Winthrop Group has identified 7 steps for generating more impactful analytics. Companies that embrace these practices will be better able to drive their performance based on sound analytics and business acumen.

STEP 1: “Walk the Talk”

Many C-level executives talk about analytics being an important function in their company.?But,?how many?actually have?a chief analytics officer in or reporting to the C-suite? Best practice companies have a senior executive with both analytic and business acumen reporting at the highest level. These executives have titles like “Chief Global Planning & Analytics Officer,” “Chief Data & Model Risk Officer,” and “Senior Vice President Revenue Management.”

As one best practice executive said, “The goal is [for analytics] to have a seat at??the?table.”

Most importantly, CEOs and senior leadership at best practice companies “walk the talk.” They don’t just talk about analytics — they utilize advanced analytics in their day-to-day decision making. They lead by example so that their organization understands the importance of?incorporating?analytics?into?decision making.

“Execs can’t just say they are data-driven. They?have to?use it!” exclaimed one senior analytics executive to us.

In addition, executives who “walk the talk” invest in the analytics function: tools, infrastructure, and — most importantly — talent.

STEP 2: Educate Your Organization

Because the analytics world is advancing so quickly, most executives throughout an organization have little knowledge of how advanced analytics can be used to enhance business performance, decision making, and innovation. This makes the creation of a learning culture with continuous education essential.

Best practice analytics executives regularly meet with their internal business partner counterparts to share capabilities. In addition, line managers who have benefited from advanced analytics share their experiences with their peers in company meetings or conferences. Some best practice companies hold company-wide symposia, sometimes sponsored by vendors, where company business executives share their success stories and outside vendors present their capabilities and best practices.

One executive commented, “Everyone will use analytics in their jobs in the future,” so educating the entire organization to utilize analytics will be critical to staying competitive.

STEP 3: Align Analytics With Market?Strategy & Customer Needs

How do you go to market? Are your analytic capabilities aligned with your market strategy???Are your analytic capabilities aligned with your customers’ needs for business insights?

Best practice organizations align their analytics resources with their go-to-market strategies and customers’ needs. One $6 billion packaged goods company with a multi- brand sales team serving?mass?merchandisers like?Wal?Mart?and Target aligned its analytics resources by customer.

Their chief analytics officer commented, “Our [multi- brand] sales force is aligned by retailer, so Sales needs company-wide analytics incorporating every brand by retailer.”

In another example, a $5 billion multi-brand packaged goods company had brand-specific analytics for its individual business units and multi-brand analytics to optimize multi-brand performance with customers.

Their global data and analytic insights leader said, “Brand groups [business units] have their own analytics and manage their own businesses, but my central sales analysts will make recommendations across brands.”

STEP 4: Create Close Internal Partnerships

Best practice executives agree that creating effective partnerships between the analytics function and their internal business counterparts is critical to success. Explicitly aligning business analysts with internal business partners, making them part of the business team, results in better understanding of common goals and business decisions to be made. Analysts can bring to the table the methodologies and insights required for good decisions; in some cases, they will bring in advanced decision scientists to assist.

“Everyone needs to understand what you’re trying to solve for,” commented a senior analytics executive.

Importantly, the analytics partner needs to have the business acumen to “right-size” the analytics approach commensurate with the business impact, resisting the temptation to over-deliver.

A business decision maker at a large digital media company shared, “We had a situation where lots of time and resources were wasted. I got a Maserati two months late from the analytics staff, when what I really needed was a Kia.”

There needs to be a true partnership that works in both directions. Analytics needs to embrace and meet the needs of its business partners. The business partners need to be able to trust their analytics counterparts with their “dirty laundry” and share credit for business success with them.

In some best practice companies, business analysts are “embedded” organizationally with their partners; in other cases, they are part of a central group but are explicitly assigned to work with their partners on a dedicated basis.

STEP 5: Centralize Advanced Analytics Capabilities

While best practice companies align their business analysts with go-to-market strategies and internal business partners, often on a decentralized basis, they tend to centralize their most advanced analytics and decision science capabilities in a shared service model.

These centralized groups provide leadership, skills, and tools for decision science, predictive modeling, and advanced analytics. This approach allows data scientists to share ideas, learn from each other, and develop capabilities that can be leveraged from one business unit to another.

These centralized groups often will develop high level functional specialties such as pricing and yield, marketing ROI, and inventory management models — all of which can serve multiple internal businesses and maintain consistency in measurement of KPIs.

“Sometimes brands want their ‘special snowflake’?but the company needs consistent KPI’s,” commented an executive from a best practice company.

The ability to develop sophisticated models and functional specialties evolves over time. Often, one business unit will achieve success with a particular approach and then share it with others. The business unit partner frequently is the best evangelist for the decision scientists’ work.

“Crawl, then walk, then run” in developing, implementing, and sharing new approaches, was the advice offered by one senior analytics executive.

STEP 6: Clarify Data Management Roles, Responsibilities, and Rules

Understanding???explicit???roles, responsibilities, and “rules” with respect to data management is essential, according to best practice companies. The organization needs to understand who is doing what?with?respect to areas like data governance, data base creation and maintenance, data transformation, enabling infrastructure, etc. While best practice approaches vary, each organization has an explicit set of rules for consistent implementation. For example:

“We will have one database, not five.” “These are the data definitions.”

“Data preparation will be done by the analytics group, not IT, with these specific tools.”

To achieve this clarity and consistency, there needs to be a very close partnership between the analytics function and IT. The IT strategy needs to align with and support the analytics strategy.??And because IT support is required, there needs to be clarity on what?IT’s?role is, where their responsibility ends and analytics’ responsibility begins, and which function will be providing the human and financial resources to accomplish what needs to be done.

STEP 7: Create An Analytics Community and Culture

Have you created a robust analytics community where creativity thrives? Are you able to attract and retain the talent to generate insights and innovations that drive revenue and ROI?

In a business environment where the demand for business analysts and data scientists significantly outstrips the supply, creating a robust analytics community and culture is key to building and sustaining a successful and impactful analytics organization.

It is important to understand the various types of skills needed; for example, business analysts who understand the business issues and can apply analytical tools to address them vs. PhD decision scientists and statisticians who can build complex models and drive new discoveries.

Analytics professionals want to be in a dynamic community that offers continuous learning opportunities, a stimulating peer group, and a??career path. It is essential to recruit creatively in this competitive market.

Many organizations now have continuous analytics talent recruitment and seek ways to become known as “thought leaders” in the field to attract talent; for example, by investing in speaking engagements at key conferences.

One executive commented, “You can offer things other than money or title — you can offer diversity of work. They will want to work in a range of analytic areas and be part of a learning culture.”

In large companies where analytics professionals may be both centralized and decentralized, keeping the web of analytics staff connected is imperative. Staying connected serves to promote sharing and learning, maximize synergies, and highlight growth opportunities and potential career paths.

Analytics As A Competitive Advantage

Senior analytics executives agree that the key to competitive advantage is not how many data or tools are available, but rather how quickly the data can be turned into actionable insights.

To remain relevant and competitive in this rapidly changing landscape, it will be critical for companies to ramp up their analytics capabilities and talent to support key business decisions that drive revenue and ROI.

As one executive observed,

“The value is not how big the data are, it’s how you can leverage the data quickly.”

About The Winthrop Group, Inc.

The Winthrop Group, Inc. is a consultancy of experienced executives who drive growth for Fortune 500 and emerging companies based on deep consumer and customer insight. We have reimagined and leveraged the Analytics and Insights function for a number of our clients to bolster their revenue and ROI. Our industry experience includes the technology, retail, media, manufacturing, and service sectors across digital and traditional channels.

For more information, please contact Laura Petrucci at LPetrucci@WinthropGrp.com or (323) 937-9885.