Almost fifty years ago, a band emerged from London that changed the landscape of rock music and set a new standard for musicianship. The band was The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and their front man redefined what it meant to play a guitar. Hendrix took an inanimate object – the same electric guitar that had been at the core of popular music for over a decade – and created a sound and style that made people wonder, “How does he do it?”

Fast forward to today’s world, and almost all of us have the opportunity to do something equally as transformational for your organization. We all make decisions – strategic, tactical, and operational. And most of us struggle at times to ensure that those decisions are based on sound information and reflect all sides of the issue.

Enter the new analytics experience.

This concept, as my colleagues noted last Tuesday in Chicago, is all about using practically limitless data, massive computing power and advanced analytics within Hadoop environments to optimize the decisions we make on a daily basis. The new analytics experience has a foundation in technology, but it’s really about how we use technology to improve how we think, how we manage information and how we make decisions.

What has changed to make the experience new? To name a few:

• Traditional ways of building and managing a competitive advantage don’t have the longevity that they once did. Advantages like differentiation, cost leadership, value disciplines, and business process specialization are harder to create and even harder to maintain.
• Major disruptions in consumer markets – changing demographics, population shifts, and the rise of social media – make it hard to create lasting valuable relationships with customers.
• Decision systems are becoming more complex due to the variety, diversity and interdependencies of inputs. This will make predicting outcomes more difficult as systems become more unpredictable in nature.

So, where and how can analytics help you? The best way to find out is to join our next discussion in New York City on July 14^th. In advance of that, join me in the next few blog posts as I explore how to select, start and succeed in the new data age by addressing some high-value decisions across a variety of business functions and industries. Along the way, we’ll learn how we can be legendary rock stars in our own organizations.

And since so much of this is new and emerging, let me know what you think and what kinds of decisions you are trying to optimize. I’m looking forward to the dialogue!