Analytics: The New Path to Value

Authored by MIT Sloan Management Review

According to a new MIT Sloan Management Review report, over the next two years, executives say they will focus on supplementing standard historical reporting with emerging approaches that make information come alive. These include data visualization and process simulation, as well as text and voice analytics, social media analysis, and other predictive and prescriptive techniques.

The research identifies a new five-point methodology for successfully implementing analytics-driven management for rapidly creating value. The report, which was co-sponsored by Attivio, is based on a study of nearly 3,000 executive managers worldwide, as well as in-depth interviews with leading researchers.

According to the report, as the well-documented "data deluge" deepens, many executives have shifted from feeling overwhelmed to recognizing that the smartest organizations are already capitalizing on analytics to gain competitive advantage. The survey findings outlined in the research report note:

• Top-performing companies are three times more likely to be sophisticated users of analytics, and are two times more likely to say that analytics is a competitive differentiator.
  
• Six out of 10 respondents cited "innovating to achieve competitive differentiation" as a top business challenge.
  
• In the area of analytics for unstructured data, patterns can be visualized through verbal maps that pictorially represent word frequency.