The Premier Business Leadership Series focused largely – and rightly – on the business benefits of analytics. But driving those benefits requires a serious analysis of the business environment and what is going to deliver most value to the organization. Looking at what was done in the past won’t cut mustard. In the current volatile environment, where the lifespan of companies is shrinking and most are experiencing a bumpy recovery from the downturn, leaders are looking to move from best practice to next practice, and there is necessarily a creative tension between speed to value and the longer term strategy.
These were some of the themes examined in depth by Allan Russell of SAS and George Marcotte, partner at Accenture, in the conference's Masterclass session, Create Your Own Upturn with Analytics-Enabled Outcomes.
Customers need to be helped through the thinking processes, and Accenture is working closely with SAS to ensure that analytics delivers optimum value, focusing on where companies want to beat the competition (and can beat the competition) as well as the technology and data context. Leadership questions (“what should we do next and why, what will be most helpful to our strategy?” and governance questions (such as, “did we get what we expected, and do we understand it?”) are central, according to Allan.
George presented an Analysis Value Assessment Toolkit that will help ensure that analytics projects deliver a quick payback while staying strategically on track:
- Diagnostics: what are we measuring and why?
- Identify the value drivers.
- Gather the necessary financial data.
- Quantify the benefits/impact.
- Estimate the investment costs.
- Prioritize based on capabilities.
- Develop a roadmap.
- Develop project charters.
The overall message may sound mundane but it is one that leaders need to take on board: it ain’t gonna happen by itself.
