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The 5As of Analytics Transformation

Embedding analytics DNA into business decision making

Addressing barriers of analytics transformation: The change path to the insight-powered enterprise

Companies around the globe are tapping into the power derived from analytics to become intelligent businesses, where data-driven insights drive decision-making. However, many companies that have invested heavily in analytics, experience disappointing results and less-than-expected returns on analytics investments (ROI).

Accenture helps companies transform into insight-powered enterprises by adopting a five-step — or “5As” — approach to embed insight-driven decision-making at scale.

This approach evolves and embeds analytics in role-based decision-making in a manner that makes it part of the cultural DNA of the organization.

Read on to learn more about the 5As of Analytics Transformation.

VIEW THE 5As OF ANALYTICS TRANSFORMATION

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According to Accenture and MIT® joint research 92% of high-performing companies report receiving a significant ROI from analytics, versus only 24% for low-performing companies.

Insights Drive High Performance

Insights drive high performance

As the Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) of a large corporation pointed out, “As little as two years ago, the analytics journey was an out-of-body experience that most struggled to understand, while today analytics is very much an in-body real experience and it needs to evolve to become very much a part of our cultural DNA.”

Companies today are:

Establishing analytics centers of excellence.

Sourcing data scientists and other analytics-related talent.

Creating data lakes and filling them with data.

Spending heavily on technology to handle large internal and external data flows.

The linkage between the analytics capability and high performance is clear. Twice as many High Performers (92%) are adopting analytics to support decision-making (versus 48% Low Performers).

THE 5As OF ANALYTICS TRANSFORMATION

So why isn’t everybody able to successfully navigate their analytics transformation journey? Our research shows that high performers do a better job of overcoming internal change barriers, successfully transforming the way decisions are made.

Lack of analytics vision and missing the right sponsorship 3x Higher of High Performers compared to Low Performers (89% vs 37%).

Inability to shift culture of organization 81% of High Performers manage to foster a culture of experimentation, vs. 25% of Low Performers.

Politics and inability to change more than 50% of Low Performers cite these as key challenges.

Not enough stakeholder engagement 75% of Hight Performers manage to empower decisions at lower levels in the organization

As a result, companies find themselves building data warehouses and data lakes, hiring and sourcing expensive talent, and developing advanced analytics and machine learning models without really changing the way decisions are made.

The analytics transformation
change journey

To maximize their return on analytics
investments, organizations should learn
how to be both proactive and disciplined
in managing the cultural change required
to power an analytics transformation.

ANALYTICS LEVERAGED TO UNLOCK NEW GROWTH, PROFITABILITY AND PERFORMANCE

Case Studies

Analytics Change Journey

Creating cultural change

The path to becoming an insight-powered enterprise is not an easy one—embedding analytics into role-based decision-making requires changing the cultural DNA of the organization. Without evolving the culture , even the top technologies and talent will face problems in getting the best returns from enterprise analytics programs.

Is your organization ready for digital transformation rooted in analytics insights? Here are seven questions to ask:

What works for the culture of my organization? Contests? Relationships? Simplifying the message?

Are the leaders of my organization aligned around the common vision? Are they committed to driving the change?

To what extent does my team trust the change process?

Are stakeholders aware and excited about the analytics change?

Are we using the design-led approach to engage stakeholders into the change journey?

Are we still making decisions based on intuition? Or are we actually using data-driven insights?

Are we measuring the change journey? Do we know what’s on our way?

Summary and Contacts

Engaging in change may be hard in the beginning, but once it gains momentum, it’s hard to stop. We believe companies that drive adoption both top-down through sponsorship and bottom-up through engaging stakeholders in designed thinking get the prize at the end. By embedding insight-driven decision-making into their core DNA, measuring the journey and celebrating success, they have the best chance of optimizing their analytics investment and of using analytics-driven insights to make better decisions.

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