Big data and analytics have rocketed to the top of the corporate agenda. Executives look with admiration at how Google, Amazon, and others have eclipsed competitors with powerful new business models that derive from an ability to exploit data. They also see that big data is attracting serious investment from technology leaders such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Meanwhile, the tide of private-equity and venture-capital investments in big data continues to swell.
Making Advanced Analytics Work for You
Senior leaders who write off the move toward big data as a lot of big talk are making, well, a big mistake. So argue McKinsey’s Barton and Court, who worked with dozens of companies to figure out how to translate advanced analytics into nuts-and-bolts practices that affect daily operations on the front lines. The authors offer a useful guide for leaders and managers who want to take a deliberative approach to big data—but who also want to get started now.
First, companies must identify the right data for their business, seek to acquire the information creatively from diverse sources, and secure the necessary IT support. Second, they need to build analytics models that are tightly focused on improving performance, making the models only as complex as business goals demand. Third, and most important, companies must transform their capabilities and culture so that the analytical results can be implemented from the C-suite to the front lines. That means developing simple tools that everyone in the organization can understand and teaching people why the data really matter.
Embracing big data is as much about changing mind-sets as it is about crunching numbers. Executed with the right care and flexibility, this cultural shift could have payoffs that are, well, bigger than you expect.