Recently, more companies have focused their attention on analytics and the role that they play in reinventing company management practices. Participants at MIT’s CIO Symposium on “Emerging Stronger from the Downturn” reported an increased use of data analysis and analytics applications to “understand customers, parse trends, distribute decision making, and manage risk.”
To help managers capitalize on the ways in which information and analytics are changing the competitive landscape, MIT Sloan School of Management and the IBM Institute for Business Value have initiated a research program entitled “The New Intelligent Enterprise,” which addresses the following:
- What threats and opportunities will companies face?
- What new business models, organizational approaches, competitive strategies, work processes, and leadership models will emerge?
- How will the best organizations reinvent themselves to use technology and analytics to achieve novel competitive advantage?
- How will companies learn not only to be smarter, but also to act smarter?
The collaboration’s first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Survey of nearly 3,000 executives (MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2010) reveals these top three findings:
- Executives name innovation as their top business concern.
- There is a striking correlation between an organization’s analytics sophistication and its competitive performance.
- The biggest obstacle to adopting analytics is lack of know-how about using it to improve business.
In general, EHS/Sustainability/CSR departments struggle with innovation—they are entrenched in mental models that don’t support learning from data/analytics analysis. But departments that have evolved their data collection and analysis practices are generally better performers.
The New Intelligent Enterprise Survey reports that IT departments don’t lead the charge in this area, but rather that analytics use and sophistication takes root in areas of need. There is a natural and important need in EHS/sustainability/CSR departments.
How might you upgrade your existing information and analytics processes? How would you begin to measure your department’s performance? How do you think such a measure could be used as a corporate KPI?
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)