Why Consumer Goods Companies Need Analytics to Compete?

Mark A. Smith in his Information Management Blog titled "Consumer Goods Companies Need Analytics to Compete" contests that given the cutthroat competitive landscape among consumer goods manufacturers, from food and beverage to electronics and automotives, capturing the minds and wallet share of customers, by reaching out to them with the right product and right price is no easy task.

Optimizing business efforts from manufacturing to product and throughout the supply chain to customers requires a comprehensive set of tasks that cannot be done without insights on what has happened in the past and where current activities are going. Those event-driven and demand-driven insights can come through analytics that assess the small but important details of pricing, trade promotions and processes in the supply chain to keep retailers satisfied with inventory levels.

Analytics on Analytics: Is Decision Management, the Last Frontier in BI?

 

Boris Evelson in his Information Management Blog / Forrester Muse titled "Decision Management, Possibly the Last Frontier in BI" leans on an excellent article on the subject by Tom Davenport and reports on Forrester Research and the trend for 'Thinking Ahead" companies  to venture into combining reporting and analytics with decision management along the following lines:

• Automated (machine) vs. non automated (human) decisions, and

• Decisions that involve structured (rules and workflows) and unstructured (collaboration) processes.

Unfortunately, current best practices and technologies to address these four distinct, but closely related requirements, come from different vendors, technologies and experts.

Six Steps to Governing Analytics

This approach deals directly with behavioral change and the actions to help ensure that value is being achieved

Information Management Magazine, July/Aug 2010

Greg Todd

Predictive analytics takes the information made available through descriptive analytics (historical facing) and combines it with more sophisticated statistical modeling, forecasting and optimization techniques to derive insights which help to anticipate the impact on business outcomes. Where are organizations when it comes to leveraging predictive analysis? Research shows that while some organizations may analyze data to predict what might happen in the future in terms of competitor activities, market trends, product/service development, risk management, financial/economic trends and skill requirements, many organizations are still using predictive analytics only to a minor extent, if at all.It's clear that companies need to move from descriptive analytics (the "what") to predictive analytics (the "now what?"), from "what happened?" to "what's the best that can happen?"
During previous economic downturns, companies that thrived used data-derived insights made by informed decision-makers to produce lasting competitive advantage...

Data Governance: What "Right" Looks Like

There is a proper way to implement data governance, and either it works or it needs improvement

Jane Griffin Information Management Magazine, July/Aug 2010

In school, you got an "A." In golf, it's a par. With your sales forecast,it's a defined set of numbers or a big account won. In most things personal and in business it's pretty easy to tell when you get it right. With goals that are less familiar you ask yourself, "How do I know if I'm doing this right; how do I know if I'm achieving my goals?" For companies trying to implement data governance programs, those kind of questions get asked - a lot.

Data governance programs are as unique as the companies that implement them. However, the frameworks for data governance programs are actually pretty similar for each implementation. There are certain foundational components on which governance is built. I'm going to briefly describe each component and then describe how that component looks when it's being properly managed. In other words, we're going to describe what "right" looks like.


The six components of a data governance framework are: