Save and make money with analytics

How can you implement your analytics initiatives for maximum return?

Analytics capabilities are being used to help companies optimize people, processes, and technology. From staffing to inventory to raw materials, analytics can give companies visibility into their precious resources and help ensure that those resources deliver optimal value.

For analytics to help the organization save or make money, careful implementation of analytics initiatives is critical. The "test and learn" approach, outlined in Analytics: All about the Money, helps ensure that small-scale changes are tested thoroughly before they are rolled out to the larger organization, minimizing costs and risk while improving outcomes.

Saving money with analytics can also mean reducing investment in the organization’s analytics infrastructure. This involves taking a closer look at the enterprise data warehouse. A careful assessment of what decisions the warehouse will (and will not) support can help contain infrastructure costs.

Organizations can make money with analytics through incremental revenue gains from sales, marketing, and new product development activities. Analytics can help businesses sell more products, receive higher profits for each product sold, develop products customers want to buy, and through effective targeting and promotions.

To save and make money with analytics, companies should turn hype into quantifiable results. Big data "fishing expeditions" have to be replaced by careful, productive analysis of business problems, and buzzwords exchanged for effective cost-benefit analyses.