Business leadership through analytics

Weak economic growth, increasing business complexity, and intensifying competition are among the motivations for the growing use of analytics across organizations of all types. In this business environment, enterprise leadership requires new tools and new insights to make better decisions. While analytic techniques, no matter how primitive, have been used to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations for decades, if not centuries, capability and sophistication are now growing rapidly. Advanced analytics is proving to be a transformational technology for businesses, providing a source of competitive advantage and delivering significant, measurable outcomes. Risk management, sales-force productivity, workforce optimization, enterprise planning, and market intelligence are a few examples of core business processes that have significantly benefited from emerging analytical methodologies. As analytic tools used to transform business processes are integrated into enterprise IT (information technology) systems for use by senior business leaders, they are driving new innovations to address the size, speed, and complexity issues faced by large, global enterprises. This position paper explores emerging trends in the leadership application of analytics in global business organizations.