The Value of Business Analytics: Identifying the Path to Profitability

CORE VOCABULARY

Throughout this book we will be using certain terms repeatedly; for clarity, we will spend some time here defining what they mean.

The Business Analytics Team

At its core, a business analytics team is charged with creating value. We will consider the many meanings of value in Chapter 4, but for now we will say that it is often economic return in some form. Common examples include revenue growth, profitability improvements, or cost reductions.

The team delivers this value through leveraging competencies within specific roles, using tools and in the process, creating a series of assets. Within this book, an asset is some form of tangible or intangible object that can be tracked, viewed, managed, and used. Much like the resource-based view of strategic planning, the team takes time, experience, and other resources and, through application, creates these assets, which then act as vehicles for value delivery.

To create these assets, the team leverages two environments within a single analytics platform: a discovery environment and an operational environment. These platforms offer standardized tools and allow the creation, reuse, and management of standardized assets. The team’s discovery environment is used to generate insight and develop assets and its operational environment is used to turn these assets into operational processes.

Over the next few subsections, we will define each of these in greater detail.

Competencies

Developing processes, models, and other assets ...