Businesses coming round to analytics

Despite slowness in capitalising on the full potential of analytics, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL) said that 96% of respondents thought analytics would become more important to their organisations in the next three years.

In addition, the Analytics Advantage survey found that 49% of respondents said that the greatest benefit of using analytics is that it is a key factor in better decision-making capabilities.

The survey also said that 55% of respondents recognised the influence analytics was having on their businesses as their marketing and sales groups invest in analytics; second only to finance operations.

However, the survey also found that there were operational and structural challenges with 20% of respondents saying there was no single executive responsible for data and analytics while if there was an individual identified it tended to be the business leader, at 23%, or the CFO, 18%. Deloitte said that coordination and alignment was needed “to realise the true value of analytics and internal discussions should tae place to determine who owns the role”.

In addition, 42% of firms believed that their employees did not have the correct analytics skills.

The report added: “Organisations will be slow to fully capitalise on the potential of analytics unless they are able to overcome several key barriers; data management and access to talent are the most problematic.”

DTTL senior adviser to Deloitte Analytics, and visiting professor at Harvard Business School, Thomas Davenport said: “Organisations are making strides to incorporate more analytics practices into their organisations, but it get the most out of the data they are already collecting, organisations need to have the right talent to analyse the data.”