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Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results
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In their previous book, Competing on Analytics, Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris showed how pioneering firms were building their entire strategies around their analytical capabilities. Rather than "going with the gut" when pricing products, maintaining inventory, or hiring talent, managers in these firms use data, analysis, and systematic reasoning to make decisions that improve efficiency, risk-management, and profits.
Now, in Analytics at Work, Davenport, Harris, and coauthor Robert Morison reveal how any manager can effectively deploy analytics in day-to-day operationsone business decision at a time. They show how many types of analytical tools, from statistical analysis to qualitative measures like systematic behavior coding, can improve decisions about everything from what new product offering might interest customers to whether marketing dollars are being most effectively deployed.
Based on all-new research and illustrated with examples from companies including Humana, Best Buy, Progressive Insurance, and Hotels.com, this implementation-focused guide outlines the five-step DELTA model for deploying and succeeding with analytical initiatives. You'll learn how to:
· Use data more effectively and glean valuable analytical insights
· Manage and coordinate data, people, and technology at an enterprise level
· Understand and support what analytical leaders do
· Evaluate and choose realistic targets for analytical activity
· Recruit, hire, and manage analysts
Combining the science of quantitative analysis with the art of sound reasoning, Analytics at Work provides a road map and tools for unleashing the potential buried in your company's data.
- ISBN-109781422177693
- ISBN-13978-1422177693
- PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
- Publication dateFebruary 8, 2010
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.6 x 0.84 x 9.48 inches
- Print length240 pages
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- ASIN : 1422177696
- Publisher : Harvard Business Review Press (February 8, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781422177693
- ISBN-13 : 978-1422177693
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.6 x 0.84 x 9.48 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #755,237 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #108 in Business Mathematics
- #1,814 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving
- #8,109 in Leadership & Motivation
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About the authors
Tom Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College. He is also a Visiting Professor at Oxford's Said Business School, a Fellow of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a Senior Advisor to Deloitte's AI practice. He is a widely published author and speaker on the topics of AI, analytics, information and knowledge management, reengineering, enterprise systems, and electronic business. Tom has written, co-authored, or edited 23 books, including the first books on business analytics, enterprise AI, business process reengineering, knowledge management, attention management, and enterprise systems. He has written over 300 articles for such publications as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, the Financial Times, and many other publications, and has been a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Information Week, and CIO. He has been named one of the world's top 25 consultants by Consulting magazine, one of the 100 most influential people in the IT industry by Ziff-Davis magazines, and one of the top 50 business school professors by Fortune magazine.
Robert Morison is co-author of What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life's Third Age (Wiley, 2020), Analytics At Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results (Harvard Business Press, 2010), Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills And Talent (Harvard Business Press, 2006), and the Harvard Business Review article "It's Time To Retire Retirement," which received a McKinsey Award.
Bob is a highly accomplished business researcher, writer, speaker, and management consultant.
He has been leading research at the intersection of business, technology, and people management for more than 30 years, working with hundreds of major organizations across industries. His innovative work has ranged from business reengineering to technology and workforce management to business analytics, and most recently the lifestage of retirement. He has spoken before scores of corporate, industry, and government groups, and has been a commentator on workforce issues on Nightly Business Report on PBS.
Jeanne G. Harris teaches Leading Business Analytics at Columbia University of New York. Jeanne is also executive research fellow emerita and the former Global Managing Director of Information Technology Research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance in Chicago. At Accenture, she led the Institute's global research agenda in the areas of information, technology, and analytics. In 2009, Jeanne received Consulting Magazine's Women Leaders in Consulting award for Lifetime Achievement.
She is the co-author with Tom Davenport of the extensively updated 2017 edition of "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning" published by Harvard Business Review Press. "Competing on Analytics" demonstrates how high performance businesses are successfully leveraging big data, machine learning, AI, optimization and other analytical techniques;thereby building competitive strategies around data-driven insights that are generating outstanding business performance. Harvard Business Review editors named the bestselling first edition of Competing on Analytics (translated into 13 languages) one of the top breakthrough ideas of the 21st Century. CIO Insight magazine included the book on their list of "the most provocative, engaging business books of all-time."
"Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010) (with co-authors Tom Davenport and Bob Morison) is an indispensable guide for managers seeking to help their organizations create and sustain an analytical capability that enables them to routinely make better decisions in every aspect of their business.
During more than thirty years at Accenture, Jeanne consulted to a wide variety of organizations in many different industries worldwide. She led Accenture's business intelligence, analytics, performance management, knowledge management, and data warehousing consulting practices. Jeanne has worked extensively with clients seeking to improve their managerial information, decision-making, analytical and knowledge management capabilities.
Jeanne's work has been published in numerous business and academic publications, including Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review. Her research has been quoted extensively by the international business press, including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Forbes Magazine, CFO Magazine, CIO Magazine, Directors and Boards,Computerworld and Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Jeanne has been a keynote speaker at dozens of corporate events for executive audiences, including those sponsored by the Harvard Business Review, Computerworld, Strata, Gartner, and major software vendors.
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According to research conducted by the authors, 40% of major business decisions are not based on facts, but on the manager's gut. As the authors point out, "sometimes intuitive and experience-based decisions work out well, but often they either go astray or end in disaster: executives pursue mergers and acquisitions to palliate their egos, neglecting the sober considerations that create real value; banks make credit and risk decisions based on unexamined assumptions about always-rising asset values; governments rely on sparse intelligence before deciding whether to wage war. Such are the most extreme cases of ill-informed decision making. In other cases, nonanalytical decisions don't lead to tragedy, but they do leave money on the table: businesses price products and services based on their hunches about what the market will bear, not on actual data detailing what consumers have been willing to pay under similar circumstances in the past; managers hire people based on intuition, not on an analysis of the skills and personality traits that predict an employee's high performance; supply chain managers maintain a comfortable level of inventory, rather than a data-determined, optimal level; baseball scouts zoom in on players who 'look the part', not on those with the skills that - according to analytics - win games". And "while analytics are not perfect, we prefer them to the shoddy alternatives of bias, prejudice, self-justification, and unaided intuition. Humans often make long lists of excuses not to be analytical, but there's plenty of research showing that data, facts, and analysis are powerful aids to decision making, and that the decisions made on them are better than those made through intuition or gut instinct. Therefore, use analytics. If you can measure and analyze something, do it - but don't forget to incorporate your experience, knowledge, and qualitative insights around the world".
The point of this book is to present a set of tools to make one's firm more analytical, and demonstrate that becoming more analytical should be an essential concern for the entire organization. In essence, the authors present analytics to readers who do not necessarily want to transform their firms into analytical competitors, but to move them to greater analytical maturity. This reviewer particularly enjoyed the second part of this book, which discusses various topics centered around the concern of staying analytical. For example, the authors discuss the difference between "craft" and "industrial" approaches to employing business analytics, where the former is a one-time effort that is inherently limited in effect, and the latter takes more time and effort up front but leads to instantaneous automated decision making. Accompanying this discussion is an explanation on how embedded predictive analytics fits into claims processing in the insurance industry, and a well presented diagram by SPSS that shows how manual and automated or partially automated decision making can be joined together in one overall process, reminiscent of what James Taylor and Neil Raden present at length in "Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions". The authors later discuss what their research has concluded on how to overcome obstacles, or "sticking points" specific to embedded analytics implementations.
The chapter entitled "Build an Analytical Culture" combined with the earlier chapter "Analysts" from the first part of the book are especially well written, incorporating discussions on how to start and grow an analytical culture, as well as how to attract and retain analytical talent. In the closing chapters, the authors present what they do and do not promise, and as a consultant this reviewer especially appreciated this aspect of this text; regarding the latter, "analytical decisions aren't the only ones that will lead to success", "your analytical decisions won't always be perfect", "you'll need to develop new analytically based insights to stay ahead of the competition", "sometimes the world will change, and invalidate the models that guide your decisions", and "analytics are not all you need to make good decisions"; regarding the former, "you'll make better strategic decisions", "you'll make better tactical and operational decisions", "you'll have a better ability to solve problems", "you'll have better business processes", "you'll be able to make faster decisions and get more consistent results", "you'll be able to anticipate shifting trends and market conditions", and "you'll get better business results". In the view of this reviewer, this book is not only appropriate for business readers new to analytics, but for consultants and other practicing individuals already comfortable with analytics who want to continue to demonstrate the value of analytics to clients. Well recommended.
Chapter seven, Embed Analytics in Business Processes, is particularly good. In it, the authors warn against adoption of analytics on a one-time, project basis (they call this craft analytics). Instead, they advocate analytics as an integral part of the corporate persona. They give many great tips on how to overcome the common objections and roadblocks to adopting an analytics culture.
I have two minor issues with the book. One issue is the authors' implication that reporting and dashboarding are simplistic forms of BI. Enterprise and departmental reporting remain the predominant need in BI since most companies still don't have it. Another minor issue revolves around a statement the authors make: "Most information work is done through personal productivity tools like Microsoft Office." I absolutely agree with their observation. Even with the advent of very complex and expensive BI software packages, humble Excel remains the workhorse of end-user reporting and analysis. Unfortunately the authors never really address this reality. Even with these two minor issues, this is a really solid book. Highly recommended.
I have worked with great "Intuitive" teams and have been able to integrate analytics at various points...But, the key is to get Buy-In from your key stakeholders, or the effort is futile and an analytically oriented competitor is ready to eat up some of your marketshare!
Great Book, Will stay on my reference shelf for a while I think...."
I read it as part of my Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) certification and I would highly recommend it for this exam or generally. It has many examples of application of business analytics into everyday business of numerous types of companies. It is possible that, as some reviewers suggested, it contains a few management cliches, but it is still very instructive.
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