You Know You Compete on Analytics When…

1. You apply sophisticated information systems and rigorous analysis not only to your core capability but also to a range of functions as varied as marketing and human resources
2. Your senior executive team not only recognizes the importance of analytics capabilities but also makes their development and maintenance a primary focus.
3. You treat fact-based decision making not only as a best practice but also as part of the culture that’s constantly emphasized and communicated by senior executives.
4. You hire not only people with analytics skills but a lot of people with the very best analytics skills-and consider them a key to your success.
5. You not only employ analytics in almost every function and department but also consider it so strategically important that you manage it at the enterprise level.
6. You not only are expert at number crunching but also invent proprietary metrics for use in key business processes.
7. You not only use copious data and in-house analysis but also share them with customers and suppliers.
8. You not only avidly consume data but also seize every opportunity to generate information, creating a “test and learn” culture base on numerous small experiments.
9. You not only have committed to competing on analytics but also have been building your capabilities for several years.
10. You not only emphasize the importance of analytics internally but also make quantitative capabilities part of your company’s story, to be shared in the annual report and in discussions with financial analysts.
    (Davenport, Thomas H. (2006), “Competing on Analytics”, Harvard Business Review, page 9)

Using analytics in your competitive intelligence is a natural evolution, but also requires that the company evolve with you. Executive management has to respect the data, the findings and recommendations. Without this level of buy-in, you'll have analytics with no audience. And, if a predictive model falls in the woods...

If your company is ready to introduce analytics to your competitive intelligence or if you want to take your program higher than it has gone in the past, let's chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)