516 – Setting up to Lead with Analytics: Organizational and Managerial Considerations
Setting Up the Organization for Analytics
Michiko I Wolcott
Msight Analytics
The heightened attention to everything data has many aspiring to do everything bigger and better with analytics. However, the effectiveness of data and analytics initiatives has varied widely despite the general recognition of their strategic importance; the prevalence of failure to meet expectations in data and analytics continues to be an often-cited phenomenon. Whether analytics is one of the core activities of the organization (e.g. consulting companies) or exists to support its non-analytics core activities, analytical capability development tends to focus on hard and soft skills, tools, and technologies. Unfortunately, those alone do not solve the fundamental challenge of how to develop an organization that operationalizes and/or monetizes analytics effectively. Specifically, relatively little attention is paid to the organizational aspects of the analytical capability development. We explain some of the key organizational considerations for building an enterprise ecosystem for analytics, which among others include organizational structure, organizational culture, and cross-functional business processes, and discuss best practices and challenges in its implementation.