Are the big bucks being shelled out on big data not having the big impact anticipated? Michael Schrage wrote in the Harvard Business Review that the best data analytics lead to the same organizational culture.
Schrage’s research suggests it’s how the companies use their analytics that really matters. The ones that have moderate outcomes are employing big data for decision support, he said, whereas the most successful return on analytics is when “firms use them to effect and support behavior change.” It seems analytics are the most effective when “they’re used to invent and encourage different kinds of conversations and interactions,” he said.
However, this isn’t as easy as it may seem. “People may need to share and collaborate more; functions may need to set up different or complementary business processes; managers and executives may need to make sure existing incentives don’t undermine analytic-enabled opportunities for growth and efficiencies,” suggested Schrage. He used the example of a medical supply company that employed their results not to support existing sales programs, but to implement entirely new ones. “[T]he most productive conversations centered on how analytics changed behaviors rather than solved problems,” he said. Ask not what analytics can do for you, but what you can do for analytics.
Attorney Marlisse Silver Sweeney is a freelance writer based in Vancouver.MarlisseSilverSweeney@gmail.com. Twitter: @MarlisseSS. LTN: @lawtechnews.
