HBR Insights Future of Business Boxed Set (8 Books)

Introduction

WHAT MAKES ANALYTICS STRATEGIC

by Thomas H. Davenport

Organizations are eager to reap the rewards of data and analytics—to learn about their customers by gathering vast amounts of data, to use that information to make better products and rise above the competition, and to enlist machine-learning algorithms to create new opportunities and improve performance. Yet, despite their efforts, many companies find that progress toward these goals is painfully slow. The successful use of analytics requires not only high-quality data and powerful hardware and software, but also a culture that encourages data-driven decisions and a set of skills to make them. Relatively few organizations have all those capabilities at scale.

Throughout most ...