In March, San Francisco hosted the 2011 Predictive Analytics World conference. Not surprisingly, one of the keynote speeches was given by Thomas Davenport, the Babson professor and best-selling author of books on the use of analytics in business and, most recently, on decision-making. Davenport’s key points in the keynote entitled “The New Quantitative Era: Creating Successful Business Change with Analytics.” were summarized by another conference speaker and author on business intelligence and decision-making. It’s clear that bad lending decisions were responsible, at least in part, for our current economic crisis, and there are many more examples of good and bad decisions that have substantially impacted the future of an organization. As senior management attempts to better manage risk, it puts a spotlight on the process of how decisions get made in an organization. Understanding and improving that process has become important and it’s one of the primary reasons that there is so much attention on data analytics today.
Davenport believes that a new culture is beginning to take shape where data analytics aren’t accepted – they’re expected. He says that analyzing data is becoming the primary way for organizations to make decisions and, with analytics being performed increasingly in many different areas of a company, the notion of “enterprise analytics” is taking shape.
Davenport notes from his previous research that, while data analytics takes a front-and-center role in this new culture, it’s only one of several aspects of the decision-making process that should to be considered. Improving the process of how decisions get made in an organization may require other cultural and leadership changes, better data, new business processes that incorporate data analytics, increased training, communication and collaboration. Fortunately, the tools and technologies that are being deployed can not only help provide data analytic capabilities but can also help companies make progress in these other areas.
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Steve McDonnell
Spotfire Blogging Team
