Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning / Edition 1

by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris

Overview

You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to “out-think” your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool.

In Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. Their secret weapon? Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling.

Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples—from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay’s, Capital One, Harrah’s, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox—illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781422103326
Publisher:	Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date:	02/05/2007
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.60(h) x (d)

About the Author

Thomas H. Davenport is the President's Distinguished Chair at Babson College and a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business. Jeanne G. Harris is Executive Research Fellow and Director of Research for the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business.

Table of Contents

Foreword   Gary Loveman     ix
Acknowledgments     xiii
The Nature of Analytical Competition
The Nature of Analytical Competition: Using Analytics to Build a Distinctive Capability     3
What Makes an Analytical Competitor?: Defining the Common Key Attributes of Such Companies     23
Analytics and Business Performance: Transforming the Ability to Compete on Analytics into a Lasting Competitive Advantage     41
Competing on Analytics with Internal Processes: Financial, Manufacturing, R&D, and Human Resource Applications     57
Competing on Analytics with External Processes: Customer and Supplier Applications     83
Building an Analytical Capability
A Road Map to Enhanced Analytical Capabilities: Progressing Through the Five Stages of Development     107
Managing Analytical People: Cultivating the Scarce Ingredient That Makes Analytics Work     131
The Architecture of Business Intelligence: Aligning a Robust Technical Environment with Business Strategies     153
The Future of Analytical Competition: Approaches Driven by Technology, Human Factors, and Business Strategy     175
Notes     187
Index     199
About the Authors     217

Editorial Reviews

“[the] seminal work, Competing on Analytics, helped shape the evolution of the discipline of business analytics.” — Health Data Management

“Harvard Business School Press, Davenport in particular, has produced some excellent books on competitive analytics and the like, with good case studies…” - ZD Net

From the Publisher

It's all about looking behind time-honored assumptions and ideas for what makes for good people and testing them instead of going on your intuition and your gut.
—Thomas Davenport

Forbes

...the traditional ways of seeking competitive advantage are redundant and...the future lies with the ability to analyse the very considerable volumes of data it amasses about itself.

The Financial Times

Competing on Analytics is hardly the last word on the matter, but it is a useful primer for a business field that seems likely only to grow in importance.

The Wall Street Journal

That insight [you are searching for] is probably lying inside data you already have or could easily obtain. That's the key premise of Competing on Analytics.

CFO.com