How Industrial-Strength Analytics is Revolutionizing Business Strategy

How to Create Armies of Killer Apps: The Power of Industrial-Strength Analytics

In today’s business landscape, companies are in a race to create the ultimate “killer app” – a product, service or process that upends customer expectations and optimizes operations, giving them a significant competitive advantage. But what if you could create not just one, but armies of killer apps across your entire organization? That’s the goal of a new breed of companies who are transforming their businesses by deploying industrial-strength analytics across a wide variety of activities.

In this post, we’ll explore why organizations should be competing on analytics, the characteristics of analytics competitors, and how companies like Marriott International have leveraged analytics to become leaders in their field.

Why Organizations Should Compete on Analytics

Business processes are among the last remaining points of differentiation, and analytics competitors know how to extract every last drop of value from those processes. Here are just a few of the benefits that come with a data-driven approach:

• Understanding customer needs: Analytics competitors know what products customers want and the prices they’re willing to pay. This knowledge can inform everything from product development to marketing campaigns.
• Optimizing operations: Analytics competitors can predict how much personnel contributes to the bottom line, how salary levels relate to individuals’ performance, and even problems with demand and supply chains. This enables them to achieve low rates of inventory and high rates of perfect orders.
• Coordinated decision-making: Analytics competitors do all of the above in a coordinated way, part of an overarching strategy pushed down to decision-makers at every level. Employees with expertise in data and trained to recognize its importance make the best decisions every day.

The Characteristics of Analytics Competitors

To identify the characteristics shared by analytics competitors, a study was conducted on 32 organizations that have made a commitment to quantitative, fact-based analysis. Here are some of the key traits that set analytics competitors apart:

• Full-bore commitment: 11 of the organizations studied were full-bore analytics competitors, meaning top management had announced that analytics was key to their strategies. They had multiple initiatives under way involving complex data and statistical analysis, and they managed analytical activity at the enterprise level.
• Expertise in key areas: Analytics competitors are leaders in their varied fields. For example, Marriott International has honed its system for establishing the optimal price for guest rooms to a science, expanding its quantitative expertise to areas such as conference facilities and catering.
• Online tools: Analytics competitors make related tools available online to property revenue managers and hotel owners. They’ve even developed revenue opportunity models that compute actual revenues as a percentage of the optimal rates that could have been charged.

Creating Armies of Killer Apps: The Transformation Required

Transforming your organization into an army of killer apps requires executives’ vocal, unswerving commitment and a willingness to change the way employees think, work, and are treated. Here are some of the steps you can take:

• Make a full-bore commitment to analytics: Announce that analytics is key to your company’s strategy and have multiple initiatives underway involving complex data and statistical analysis.
• Hire expertise in key areas: Hire employees with expertise in data and train them to recognize its importance.
• Make related tools available online: Make related tools available online to employees and stakeholders.
• Change the company culture: Make sure that every employee understands the importance of analytics and knows how to use data to make better decisions.

Characteristics of Analytics Competitors

To identify the characteristics shared by analytics competitors, a study was conducted on 32 organizations that have made a commitment to quantitative, fact-based analysis. Here are the characteristics that set analytics competitors apart:

1. A commitment to analytics: Analytics competitors have announced that analytics is key to their strategies. They have multiple initiatives underway involving complex data and statistical analysis, and they manage analytical activity at the enterprise level.

2. Coordinated approach to analytics: Analytics competitors do all of the above in a coordinated way, part of an overarching strategy pushed down to decision-makers at every level.

3. Trained employees: Employees with expertise in data and trained to recognize its importance make the best decisions every day.

Case Study: Marriott International

One analytics competitor that is at the top of its game is Marriott International. Over the past 20 years, the corporation has honed its system for establishing the optimal price for guest rooms, the key analytics process in hotels known as revenue management, to a science. Through its Total Hotel Optimization program, Marriott has expanded its quantitative expertise to areas such as conference facilities and catering, making related tools available online to property revenue managers and hotel owners. It has even developed a revenue opportunity model, which computes actual revenues as a percentage of the optimal rates that could have been charged.

Transform Your Organization into an Analytics Competitor

Analytics competitors are leaders in their fields because they have transformed their organizations into armies of killer apps. They have extracted every last drop of value from their business processes, and they use data to make the best decisions every day. The transformation requires executives’ vocal, unswerving commitment and willingness to change the way employees think, work, and are treated. As a professional business data analytics firm, we can help your organization make this transformation and become a leader in your industry.

Conclusion

As companies look for ways to gain a competitive edge, analytics has become a key area of focus. Analytics competitors are leading the way by using data to upend customer expectations and optimize operations, achieving significant advantages over their competitors. By taking a coordinated approach to analytics, committing to analytics, and training their employees, organizations can transform into analytics competitors and reap the rewards of their data-driven decisions.