A new global study -- “The Analytics Mandate” -- from MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS revealed that culture is the most important factor in achieving success with analytics. The research also points out that the talents that organizations acquire contribute to and shape internal culture.

The managers surveyed in the study reported that analytics culture is the driving factor in achieving competitive advantage from data and analytics, more important than any of the other capabilities measured.

The SAS and MIT research included a global survey of more than 2,000 business executives and interviews with more than 30 senior managers. It confirmed the strong interest in embracing analytics by organizations across the globe.

At the Premier Business Leadership Series events in London, Frankfurt and Copenhagen this May, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita McGrath argued that competitive advantage is fleeting.

Organizations need to forge a new path: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they’re exhausted. Per McGrath, analytics play an important role in helping these organizations quickly adjust, adapt and compete.

Both the MIT-SAS study and Dr. McGrath's comments reflect my own experiences working with customers around the world for nearly 30 years.

As I discuss in Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights, four key areas are crucial for organizations to address so they can generate and use business insight:  technology, skills, processes and culture.

The approach you take to uncover business insight and transform your organization will be more effective when it encompasses these four pillars.

I encourage you to get a free download of the SAS and MIT research report, “The Analytics Mandate.” Take a look, and let me know what you think via a brief comment below.

Photo by Steven Depolo // attribution by creative commons