With Insights Limited, Data, Analytics Efforts Remain Work in Progress

While the majority of organizations recognize the potential benefits of analytics initiatives, most have yet to maximize these advantages, according to a recent survey from Snowflake Computing, MicroStrategy, Wipro and Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. The resulting report, titled “An Inflection Point for the Data-Driven Enterprise,” reveals that relatively few companies are embedding data/analytics into all business decision-making. What’s more, organizations struggle to deliver actionable intelligence to their employees. Nearly 730 business leaders took part in the research. The following slide show presents survey highlights, with charts provided courtesy of Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and the three sponsoring IT companies.

In assessing the maturity of their data and analytics initiatives, 32 percent of survey respondents said their organization has standardized reporting and analysis, but it “tends to be static and backward-looking.” Three of 10 said they have established data governance and rules and aggregated analytics/intelligence into interactive dashboards for only “certain” critical decision-making.

Just one-tenth of respondents said their organization has embedded data and analytics into all business processes and decision-making. Only 9 percent have done this in addition to adding predictive capabilities, and just 7 percent have accomplished both of these goals along with the adoption of prescriptive analytics to automate some decision-making.

Eighty-six percent of respondents feel it is “very important” for their organization to extract new value and insights from existing data/analytics applications. But just 30 percent said their company is “very effective” at doing this.

Nearly four of five respondents said it is “very important” for their company to deploy analytics with high performance and scalability. However, just 27 percent rate their organization as “very effective” in these efforts.

Survey findings indicate that 78 percent of respondents believe it is “very important” to easily access and combine data from a variety of external sources. But only 23 percent said their company is “very effective” at this.

Three-quarters of respondents said it is “very important” to deliver actionable, customized intelligence to employees throughout the enterprise. Yet, just 24 percent describe their organization as “very effective” in attempting to do so.

In transitioning their organization into a more data-focused, intelligent enterprise, 77 percent of respondents ranked “better insight into customer needs and expectations” as the most “important” consideration. “Faster, more effective decision-making” ranked No. 2 as the most important consideration, as cited by 70 percent of respondents.

Nine of 10 respondents have no less than a “mid-level” degree of confidence that their organization will achieve its vision of a data-driven enterprise within the next five years. And 41 percent said they have a “high” degree of confidence that their company will reach this goal.

Advanced analytics ranks as the top tech capability for a digital transformation, cited as “very important” by 87 percent of respondents. Other top tech capabilities included digital identity/security (cited as “very important” by 81 percent of respondents), big data collection (74 percent), cloud computing (70 percent) and machine learning/artificial intelligence (also 70 percent).

Organizational silos present the biggest barrier to digital transformation, as cited by 38 percent of respondents. Legacy processes ranked second, as cited by 34 percent of respondents, followed by a lack of key digital/data analytics skills (33 percent) and a resistance to change (31 percent).