Survey: Big Data Leaders Are Embracing Analytics

Leading big data practitioners tend to be from industries with “many consumer touch points,” resulting in more mature analytics approaches that allow industry leaders to use information in more creative ways.

That’s a key conclusion of a recent data analytics survey of global companies by the management consulting firm A.T. Kearney and Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh. Respondents specialize in everything from technology and banking to health care and transportation

The “Leadership Excellence in Analytic Practices,” or LEAP, study sought to identify industry leaders and laggards. Of the 430 respondents, the survey identified 10 percent as “leaders” in the use of data analytics. They were followed by “explorers” (32 percent), “followers (38 percent) and “laggards” (20 percent).

“Only the leaders have attained the level of competency needed to impact business results significantly,” the survey found. “Those industries with many consumer touch points are generally more mature in their analytics approaches, as they tend to use information in innovative ways and take innovative approaches to product and service development.”

In assessing the impact of analytics on business strategies, the study concluded that “laggards remain focused on applying data for reporting, [while] leaders are springing forward with analytics to evaluate risks and tradeoffs, understand cost and revenue drivers and predict trends to help drive business performance and innovation.”

The LEAP study also found that corporate efforts to leverage data analytics tend to come from the top of organizations, including chief operating, financial and marketing officers. This was true for 59 percent of those surveyed.

The study also identified the emergence of a new C-level executives variously described as chief data scientists or chief analytical officers. “This role requires expertise from several domains to be woven together, including business strategy, data management, data science and technology,” the LEAP survey found.

By contrast, companies identified as “laggards” typically saw analytics promoted by mid-level IT personnel.

Furthermore, a company’s IT infrastructure alone is insufficient for promoting corporate analytics. “Leaders are focused on piloting analytics efforts to secure buy-in and driving toward the development of repeatable solutions and processes,” the study concluded. “Leading companies emphasize co-creation and collaboration among stakeholders to maximize results.”

As more industries embrace big data, analytics investments are becoming a larger portion of overall corporate technology budgets. One outcome is an emerging technology ecosystem around analytics that nevertheless remains “complex and diffuse.” The LEAP survey predicts that consolidation among current technology vendors will result in “fewer, stronger service providers to partner with.”

Future big data architectures might contain analytics services that extend from predictive modeling along with forecasting and simulation to more structured services like process optimization and event-based updating.

The LEAP study also noted the looming data analytics talent gap. “The big question almost every company faces is how to obtain the right talent to become an analytics leader,” it warned. Leading companies “emphasize the need to build an analytics-focused culture to encourage adoption across the enterprise by fostering cross-functional collaboration.”

Still, the survey concluded, “Getting the right people together with the right technology poses a major challenge.”

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