Analysis forms the basic premise on which any business can plan its growth and expansion. Organizations that fail to analyze turn into dinosaurs that are destined for extinction as the business climate changes. Thus every facet of business including operations, marketing and customer handling rely heavily on business analytics as a vital decision making tool. Through the analytical process businesses are able to broaden their objectives and thereby chalk out a clear strategy for the future. Optimization and innovation are two of the natural fallouts of business analysis.
How the Big Boys Do it?
Currently all major corporations employ Business Analytics in a significant way to enhance decision making capabilities with more accurate predictions.
Google has been the leader in this filed and has commissioned several high budget projects to analyze market trends in targeted advertising. The offshoot has been one of the biggest revenue generating innovations in terms of targeted marketing that follows the customer throughout the web. This huge success has further encouraged the search engine master to continue research that can help them decide on innovations to stay ahead of competition.
Supermarket giant Tesco defines its long term business goal as “to earn and grow lifetime loyalty of customers”. In order to achieve this they needed to understand the customer better than anyone else. Analysis of customer behavior through intense research thus became their most potent weapon for deciding company policies. Comparative prices, changing preferences, emerging trends and product affinity were some of the key areas that Tesco analyzed to formulate their strategic vision for the next decade.
Facebook’s recent launch of the Facebook Graph Search is the result of intense business analysis over the past couple of years which helped them in deciding on this new and creative search engine that adds substantial value to the site. The success of the launch was pre decided as it was based on data driven information collected from a wide variety of sources.
Where Does Business Analytics Provide Critical Inputs?
The scope for maximizing the yield from business analytics is unlimited and depends hugely in the creative and progressive thinking of the decision makers in an organization. Here are some of the more common areas where such analysis can be useful in taking crucial decision.
- For highly complex decisions that involve large number of variables and factors.
- For relatively simple decisions which have to be consistently accurate as mandated by business environment.
- For decisions where clarity in the relationship of different processes is essential to arrive at the right conclusion.
- For decisions that are intended to enhance optimization of processes and operations.
- For decisions that are linked to differentiation in the available opportunities for business.
Latest Trends in Business Analytics
Business analytics is being given importance like never before by organizations of all sizes and types. There is a consensus regarding the inevitability and indispensability of such research and analysis. Some of the most fundamental shifts which are taking place in organizational outlook towards business analysis include:
- Analytical metrics for competition analysis is considered a pre requisite for business management.
- Information sharing and collaboration across the sections of an organization is being promoted through various means of accessibility, connectivity and interaction.
- Talent gap in analytics is being plugged through intensive and continuous training and orientation of the business leaders.
- Business analytics by professionals is being promoted and awarded at every rung of the management ladder to encourage a culture of analysis.
- Business analytics is being increasingly outsourced to professional firms dealing exclusively with such research.
The business of business analytics software is estimated to grow beyond USD 50 billion by 2016 which in itself is an indicator of the importance that progressive and competitive businesses are according to this sphere of research. Thus the days of deciding through gut feelings are gone and today’s business leaders need hard facts projected through scientific research and analysis for taking vital business decision. The board room of the future is sure to be filled with statistical data, quantitative analysis, predictive models and business analysts trying provide crucial inputs to the decision makers who shall shape the strategy of organizations to remain competitive and meaningful.
Olivia Lewis is a business analyzer and writer at Researchoptimus. Her favorite blogs subjects are business analytics and market research. She loves sharing her knowledge with others.