Jeev's Blog Business Development, Consulting, and some Personal Perspectives

24Jun/110

Competing on Analytics

I foresee the future competition between rival companies will be quite a lot based on business analytics and authenticity plus speed of information processing. It is really a tool that is new in this decade in particular, but amongst other tools that help businesses compete, analytics is rising in visibility and usefulness. I consider analytics as an enabler for the traditional methods of competition - it will help reduce prices, find new markets, create customer demand, evaluate customer responses, and give more agility to the firm to shift or improve its business strategies. In addition, I also feel that analytics helps 'evaluate' current strategies faster than what you can derive from company financial statements. It is like having an eye on things going on and responding appropriately.

However, one big issue is the authenticity of the data analyzed. I remember the phrase 'Garbage In, Garbage Out' - and this holds true for times to come. This way, the basic information validation services are quite important to give credibility to the analytics' results.
Thirdly, since data can be distorted by many sources, business rivals will knowingly distort information to give different indications to their rivals - the solution is to look beyond what the data says and derive collateral conclusions. As an example, I found a company was really keen on starting a 'cycling competition' in various cities and engaged a team to find out which cities have dedicated cycling lanes. You may not be surprised, but the real reason for this study was to introduce a small car which had permits to use cycling lanes in cities. So, thinking laterally is quite important in case a business wants to know the real reasons behind the data shown by its rivals.

 

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