Competing on Analytics

In their book,^[1] Davenport and Harris describe competing on analytics as "the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management to drive decisions and actions."  They define an analytical competitor as an organization that uses analytics extensively and systematically to outthink and outperform its competition.  They see a growing cadre of companies competing this way and identify a number of trends as a result:

• More automated decisions
• More real-time decisions
• Increased use of alerts
• More prediction and less reporting
• More mining of text

Companies wanting to compete with analytics will require far more than a few "PhDs with personality" using data-mining tools on existing enterprise data.  They will need a systematic framework for using analytics to make their systems smarter.

References

[1] Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris.  Competing on Analytics.  Harvard Business School Press (2007).