Empowered by Data

Chapter FourBenefits of Setting Up Communities

Everything that is worth doing typically requires a bit of effort. The same is true for creating, growing, and developing an analytics community in your organization. Yes, it will take some time to establish, and it will require commitment, resources, and people who take ownership and responsibility. The return will make it all worthwhile for the organization, its bottom line, and, importantly, the individuals involved and the person or team that brings everyone together.

In this chapter, we explore some of the benefits that organizations can achieve by setting up an analytics community. We look at the advantages that can be gained and measured and the outcomes that are intangible or more difficult to quantify, especially at a group and individual level.

Benefits for an Organization

Let's start by looking at the direct and indirect benefits an organization can achieve when establishing, fostering, and growing an internal analytics community.

Direct Benefits

Benefits that stand out for most organizations concern efficiencies and productivity gains. These can be achieved by analytics communities, first and foremost, through improved communication and transparency.

Connecting analysts across the business and encouraging them to share what they are working on, the challenges they face, and the business questions they are tackling gives them the chance to discover gaps and overlaps. Often people work on similar problems without ...