How Business Analytics Can Pay Off Big

In every industry, companies are drowning in data. Business analytics (BA) provides the tools that decision-makers need to leverage all that data and turn it into actionable, profitable guidance. Smart leaders use that information to predict future trends and leverage opportunities. A recent survey of 3,000 executives, managers, and analysts, conducted by the MIT Sloan Management Review and the IBM Institute for Business Value, shows that 'top performing' companies - businesses that beat the competition most often and stand out as industry leaders - are far more likely to use BA than lower-performing ones. In fact, top-performing organizations use analytics five times more than lower performers, and more than twice as many top performers indicated they use analytics to guide future strategies and day-to-day operations, as compared to low performers.