Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, July/August 2014 | Page 64

ANALY TIC S AC ROS S T H E E N T ERP RISE the same metrics, as well as comparisons to the previous week and comparisons to the same week in the previous calendar year. Many reporting systems also allow for expanding the summarized data into its component parts. This is particularly useful in understanding changes in the sums. For example, a regional store manager might want to examine the storelevel detail that resulted in an increase in revenue from the home entertainment department. She would be interested in knowing whether sales increased at most of the stores in the region, or whether the increase in total sales resulted from a significant sales jump in just a few stores. She might also look at whether the increase could be traced back to just a few SKUs, such as an unusually popular movie or video game. If a likely cause of the sales increase can be identified, she might alert the store managers to monitor inventory of the popular products, reposition the products within a store, or even reallocate inventory of the products across stores in her region. … to process the amounts of data that are today being generated through social media, sensors, and more. While gut instinct is often the basis for decisions, analytically informed intuition is what wins going forward. Several studies have highlighted the value of analytics. Companies that use predictive analytics are outperforming those that do not by a factor of five. In a 2012 joint survey by the IBM Institute of Business Value and the Said Business School at the University of Oxford of more than 1,000 professionals around the world, 63 percent of respondents reported that the use of information (including big data and analytics) is creating a competitive advantage for their organizations. IBM depends on analytics to meet its business objectives and provide shareholder value. The bottom line is that analytics helps the bottom line. Your competition will not be waiting to take advantage of the new insights from big data. Should you? IBM has approached the use of analytics with a spirit of innovation and a belief that analytics will illuminate insights in data that can help improve outcomes. WHY ANALYTICS MATTER The company hasn’t been afraid to make Quite simply, analytics matters be- mistakes or redesign programs that cause it works. You can be overwhelmed haven’t worked as planned. Unlike trawith data and the value of it may be unat- ditional IT projects, most analytics projtainable until you apply analytics to create ects are exploratory. For example, the the insights. Human brains were not built Development Expense Baseline Project 64 | A N A LY T I C S - M A G A Z I N E . O R G W W W. I N F O R M S . O R G