AI-Enabled Analytics for Business

CHAPTER 7Implementing Analytics

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

—Benjamin Franklin¹

With executive commitment to budget, bandwidth, and focus and the Analytics Champion in place, an organization is ready to launch an analytics project toward becoming an analytics powerhouse. As depicted in Figure 7.1, the organization moves through five steps: (i) defining a problem, (ii) selecting an AI and analytics software vendor for a proof of concept (POC), (iii) performing the POC, (iv) benchmarking people's skillsets, and (v) scaling analytics with learnings from the POC across the executive's span of authority.

Figure 7.1 Five steps to implementing analytics.

DEFINE THE PROBLEM

Many organizations incorrectly start their analytics project by spending months and months—often with a consultant—setting a vision, mission, and strategy; defining processes; etc. But no insights are found that executives can use for data-driven decisions.

Instead, the organization would be better served with the Analytics Champion working with the department leaders who can quickly identify and prioritize problems that analytics is suited to solve. Note that “problems” can be in many flavors and can include optimizing a process (e.g. budgeting, forecasting, long-range planning, etc.) or accelerating a growth opportunity (e.g. price increase, new product introduction, ...