Enterprise Analytics: Optimize Performance, Process, and Decisions Through Big Data

As businesses recognize the immense potential of analytics, they are increasingly treating it as an enterprise resource and an enterprise priority. Now, the world’s leading researchers on large-scale analytics have brought together today’s best practices for planning, implementing, managing, and succeeding with analytics on an enterprise level.

Drawing on their pioneering work at the International Institute for Analytics, the authors illuminate the entire analytics lifecycle, addressing technology, applications, operations, governance, strategy, and more. They offer actionable solutions for leveraging proprietary data, gaining a new 360-degree view of the customer, measuring engagement in actionable ways, optimizing “next best offers,” applying analytics at production scale, using cloud resources, and linking analytics directly to business performance. Then, in a full section on the crucial human side of analytics, they address everything from building and governing analytics organizations to integrating analytics throughout global businesses.

Whether you’re an analyst, manager, strategist, executive, or technology vendor, this book will help you implement large-scale analytics faster, avoid crucial missteps, and capture far more value.

Foreword and Acknowledgments     xii
Jack Phillips
About the Authors    xiv
Introduction: The New World of Enterprise Analytics
Thomas H. Davenport

Part I:  Overview of Analytics and Their Value
Chapter 1  What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Analytics?     9
Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 2  The Return on Investments in Analytics     19
Keri E. Pearlson

Part II:  Application of Analytics
Chapter 3  Leveraging Proprietary Data for Analytical Advantage     37
Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 4  Analytics on Web Data: The Original Big Data     47
Bill Franks

Chapter 5  The Analytics of Online Engagement     71
Eric T. Peterson

Chapter 6  The Path to “Next Best Offers” for Retail Customers     83
Thomas H. Davenport, John Lucker, and Leandro DalleMule

Part III:  Technologies for Analytics
Chapter 7  Applying Analytics at Production Scale     97
James Taylor

Chapter 8  Predictive Analytics in the Cloud     111
James Taylor

Chapter 9  Analytical Technology and the Business User     123
Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 10  Linking Decisions and Analytics for Organizational Performance     135
Thomas H. Davenport

Part IV:  The Human Side of Analytics
Chapter 11  Organizing Analysts     157
Robert F. Morison and Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 12  Engaging Analytical Talent     179
Jeanne G. Harris and Elizabeth Craig

Chapter 13  Governance for Analytics     187
Stacy Blanchard and Robert F. Morison

Chapter 14  Building a Global Analytical Capability     203
Thomas H. Davenport

Part V:  Case Studies in the Use of Analytics
Chapter 15  Partners HealthCare System     215
Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 16  Analytics in the HR Function at Sears Holding Corporation     233
Carl Schleyer

Chapter 17  Commercial Analytics Culture and Relationships at Merck     241
Thomas H. Davenport

Chapter 18  Descriptive Analytics for the Supply Chain at Bernard Chaus, Inc.     249
Katherine Busey and Callie Youssi

Index     255

THOMAS H. DAVENPORT, (Cambridge, MA) co-founder and Director of Research of the International Institute for Analytics, a world renowned thought leader and executive advisor on analytics. His book, Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, was named a must-read for 2010 by CIO Insight. Davenport holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, taught at Harvard Business School, and led research centers at McKinsey and CSC. He is President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College; senior advisor, Deloitte Analytics, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; and member, Board of Sponsors, MIT Center for Information Systems.