Critical Value Of Analytics : The New Science Of Winning Essay

Distinguishing one 's firm from the alternatives is a major concern for any business. Strategic analysis provides the starting point in the strategic management process organizations use to evaluate and choose the competitive advantages that distinguish them from other organizations within the market. Dominating businesses should also "choose among alternative grand strategies to guide the firm 's activities, particularly when they are trying to decide about broadening the scope of the firm 's activities beyond its core business (Robinson & Pearce, 2009)."

The four pillars of analytics competition are (1) Support of a strategic, distinctive capability, (2) an enterprise-level approach to and management of analytics, (3) Senior management commitment, and (4) Large-scale ambition (Davenport & Harris, 2007).

The data analytic process is one in which a large amount of information is collected using software specifically geared towards collecting, identifying and storing information for use by the company. The information is gleaned from different forums, with social media being the most rich and useful. The information is then quickly sorted and organized for use by the collecting agency (Turban, Volonino, Wood, & Sipior, 2002, p. 6). The use of data analytics really took flight in 2010 when different companies offered software that enabled a company to implement their own data analytics. This led to better marketing campaigns, improved customer relations and it gave companies using the software a bigger advantage over their competitors (Savitz, 2012).

In order to be an effective analytical competitor, Davenport and Harris (2007) assert that firms must meet certain prerequisites. Those prerequisites are at least a moderate amount of quality data about the type of business that analytics will support, hardware and software, the commitment of managers to develop analytics, and executive sponsorship (Davenport and Harris, 2007, p.16). Analytics is about extrapolating new information and

In today’s companies, the analytics software plays the important role and guides the future activities to a great extent.

Evolent has a commitment in being able to compete on analytics as this is one of the key drivers of our business model. Thus, senior management is committed to have a consistent and global approach to analytics. There is a deep-rooted drive to collect data to continually build on information and how this affects the outcomes that can be obtained. The ability to predict what outcomes are needed based on captured historically and current data is essentially for the organization to contain costs and differentiate itself from the industry.

2. Uniqueness - There is no single path to follow to become an analytic competitor, and the way every company uses analytics is unique to its strategy and market position. Accenture 's use of analytics has always been unique to acquire the market position. Accenture, in telecommunication industry uses bundle

In Competing on Analytics by Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris, the pillars of analytic completion are stated as: “(1) analytics supported a strategic, distinctive capability; (2) the approach to and management of analytics was enterprise-wide; (3) senior management was committed to the use of analytics; and (4) the company made a significant strategic bet on analytics-based competition” (Davenport & Harris, 2007, pp. 511-512) . This section will describe Aramark’s position within these pillars.

As a large, multi-national financial institution, BAC / ML is at the forefront of the analytical revolution. In an interview with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) , Brian Moynihan discusses how technology can improve operational efficiency. This is a point that Davenport & Harris make in “Competing on Analytics” - that in today’s market, efficient and effective execution are one of the strategies that can pay off in separating a company from its competition. Mr. Moynihan further speaks to how big data analysis is one of the tools that can provide the intelligence needed to achieve some of their strategic goals. As one of the world’s largest banks, BAC/ML certainly has the funds and resources to bring this intelligence to bear - provided that

Companies, somehow and someway, will need to overcome these challenges because there is no stopping of the disruptive effects of the third industrial revolution. “The transition from industrial, to digital to social, is one of hard and persistent to soft and transient to ephemeral and real-time (Stein, 2013). The impact of digital channels and big data are having profound effects on marketing analytics. A significant portion of marketing analytics will be married to Information Technology (IT). In 2012, Gartner predicted Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) would spend more on IT than Chief Information Officers (CIO) (Arthur, 2012). With CIOs starting to report to CMOs, and vice versa, this trend is becoming

In today’s competitive market many Businesses are trying to use the power of insights available and provided by big data to immediately establish who did

Within the Four Pillars of Analytical Competition as described by Davenport and Harris (2007), TMNAS has varying degrees of success as well as failure. The authors describe these pillars as pivotal to ability of any organization to successfully develop in to analytical competitors. The first of these pillars is labeled Support of Strategic, Distinctive Capability (p. 24). Although TMNAS has identified its strategic capability as delivering “…efficiencies and cost savings through the streamlining of processes…” (Overview 2015), it has been not examined as a viable capability to leverage in terms of Competitive Analytics. Furthermore, given the distinct nature of TMNAS, it stands to reason that the organization may elect to take a back seat to the group companies as far as identifying a strategic capability. In examining the company’s position as a services organization, it may behoove the company to play a support role to the group companies and their front office functions in fostering the identification of strategic and distinctive capabilities. Additionally, it could fall on the members of TMNAS IT to support the spread of competitive analytics within each of its sister companies. TMNAS has not contributed to or fostered this step on the road to analytics within the group companies therefore its position within this pillar of analytics competition requires more attention and resources.

“Competing on Analytics” defines an analytical competitor “as an organization that uses analytics extensively and systematically to outthink and out execute the competition.”(1) Business analytics is a new way for companies to separate themselves from their competitors. I recently completed an internship at the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and will work there full-time upon completion of this program. PwC uses analytics to help solve complex business issues and to identify opportunities across different industries. PwC is the largest professional service company in the world and is part of the Big Four accounting firms. PwC operates in over 157 countries with more than 750 offices throughout the world.(2) PwC is structured into three service lines, which are Assurance, Advisory and Tax. The assurance practice audits almost 30% of the global fortune 500 companies.(2) The advisory practice is mainly consulting activities that cover strategy, cyber security and privacy, human resources, deals and forensics. (2) These three practices generated $35.4 billion in revenue in 2015. (2)

It gives valuable insight into a market where you can identify the size, growth and market share of your rivals, while observing trends and benchmarking objectives for the future.

Operating – ABC has traditionally competed on operating efficiency thus, ABC may not have operating expertise necessary to compete extensively on analytics. ABC needs to create an organizational level of expertise through the implementation of IT architecture, data scientist skillsets, and a comprehensive objective to implement these tools and skills.