Short Takes...on Analytics
Take a quick break and enjoy our latest reflections on analytics
Our Deloitte Analytics leaders help some of the world's biggest companies better understand how to leverage analytics insights to improve operations and drive smarter decisions every day. In this blog, they share their reflections and insights.
Is analytics driving the scale paradox?
Posted by Ryan Renner, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Wherever you look today, you can find examples of small and mid-size businesses leapfrogging competitors – even large multi-national organizations – by getting closer to their customers. By using innovative technologies like cloud, mobile, and social media, small businesses can achieve a depth of customer understanding and ‘punch above their weight class’, generating insight that was once only the domain of the large multi-national enterprises...Continue Reading
High flyers
Posted by Jeff Schwartz, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
High flyers are those early adopters applying analytics to almost every business decision, and HR is no exception. Talent analytics can offer HR new ways of approaching their most important talent questions, from recruitment to utilization to development to retention and beyond...Continue Reading
How to tell stories about data
Posted by Tom Davenport, Independent Senior Advisor, Deloitte Analytics
Ever wonder why books like Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't” or Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” are so popular? In part it’s because of their ability to “tell a story with data.” They write about content domains—electoral politics, professional sports, and financial services—that are becoming increasingly quantitative...Continue Reading
Big data: Too big to ignore
Posted by Jim Guszcza, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Whatever else one might say about the business press, it is consistent. With a notable regularity, good ideas are in turn noticed, branded, given a bullet point-friendly vocabulary, championed, boosted, and then suffer the inevitable backlash.This cycle is playing itself out once again, as discussions of business analytics are increasingly framed in terms of the newly ubiquitous theme of “big data”...Continue Reading
Helping make the invisible visible with socialytics
Posted by John Hagel, Deloitte Consulting LLP
By now, you’re probably familiar with “social graphs,” the visual representation of how individuals are connected online. Popular social networks use social graphs to represent our personal connections. While social graphs are interesting visualizations, they don’t tell us much in the way of practical business information...Continue Reading
The WOW of the HIVE
Posted by Lee Dittmar, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
What if all you needed to see the solution to a pressing business problem was a creative environment …and a little imagination? Deloitte’s HIVE is where this happens. At the HIVE, teams of business leaders and consultants work together to explore how analytics can help solve business problems...Continue Reading
Text analytics – Ride the wave or stay ashore?
Posted by Cindi Thompson, Specialist Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
As you assess the potential of big data, don’t ignore the unstructured data sitting on your desk, web and social media sites, and even sensor networks. Many companies have begun to combine these disparate sources of internal and external data to achieve new efficiencies...Continue Reading
Big data – Will it change everything?
Posted by Rich Penkoski, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
“Big Data.” By now, you know it’s big news – perhaps bigger, even, than the name suggests. Big data refers not only to the historic influx of structured and non-structured data from non-traditional sources, but also to the big questions facing organizations wading into big data waters...Continue Reading
Then and now
Posted by Matt Gentile, Principal, Deloitte FAS LLP
In 1854, a severe cholera outbreak hit the Soho district of London. Between August and September of that year, 500 people died of the disease and three-quarters of the remaining residents fled the city. Physician John Snow, who would become the "father of epidemiology...Continue Reading
The dynamics of data and human behavior in decision-making
Posted by Steven Ehrenhalt, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Laura Bede, Senior Manager, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited
The science of decision-making – behavioral economics – is not new, but its importance is growing as the velocity of decision-making increases for organizations of all kinds. Behavioral economics draws upon insights from neurology, psychology, economics, and other disciplines to better understand how human beings frame their decisions...Continue Reading
4 places big data makes sense – And why it’s worth getting there
Posted by Forrest Danson, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Small data. Big data. Medium data – we’ve begun to talk about data like a combo meal from the fast-food drive through. Regardless of its multiple flavors and sizes, data is now front and center in organizations that are paying attention to the flow of minable information from inside and outside of the organization...Continue Reading
Analytics and shared services – Delivering strategic value
Posted by Richard Sarkissian, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Shared Services is not a new concept but has historically been relegated to providing support for back office functions. While consolidating support processes and resources often results in short term cost savings and efficiency gains, the long-term value that Shared Services can provide is untapped by many organizations...Continue Reading
The insight economy: Finding value in big (and small) data
Posted by Forrest Danson, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
You’ve probably seen the headlines – Big Data is this year’s media darling. While articles about big data keep coming, the marketplace may be lacking consensus on what exactly big data is and why anyone should care. In practical terms, big data refers to datasets so large and complex they can create significant challenges for traditional data management and analysis tools in practical timeframes...Continue Reading
The road worth taking on the workforce analytics journey
Posted by Rishi Agarwal, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
With the level of HR information maturity slowly increasing, there is an opportunity for organizations to use data and analytics to guide the organization forward in a way that makes a difference. Workforce Analytics can help provide the path forward and pave the way to solve business issues involving the workforce...Continue Reading
What Would Charles Darwin Say - About Customer Analytics in the Age of Big Data?
Posted by Suketu Gandhi, Principal and Greg Banks, Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Nature creates balance. Charles Darwin made a compelling case for this. In Darwin’s published views, when too much of a certain type of foliage grows in a given region, nature may answer by propagating species who in turn eat the foliage. But it is infrequently a smooth nor painless process...Continue Reading
Cracking the code on supply and demand
Posted by Jerry O’Dwyer, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Over the course of the past year, I have found myself having more and more conversations around the use of analytics in a company’s supply chain. What strikes me about this is that using data in the supply chain isn’t new – it is different. The logistical models that worked for the U.S. military during World War II are still valid, but we’ve come a long way...Continue Reading
The art of the possible
Posted by JR Reagan, Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Business has changed, and there’s no going back. Big data is the catalyst, and businesses have to deal with it. Now. It’s not enough anymore to plug numbers into a spreadsheet or a BI tool. To understand and leverage the flood of data coming in, there’s a critical need to see it; see what it means; what it can do. In short, you need to use big data to see the art of the possible...Continue Reading
Use analytics to pull the pricing lever
Posted by John Norkus, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Price management initiatives have been shown to help companies increase their margins by 2 to 7 percent within a year, producing a 200 to 350 percent return on investment . So why is pricing so far down the list of options for organizations looking to improve performance?...Continue Reading
On-demand risk analytics: A new generation
Posted by Vivek Katyal, Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
It’s a well-known cliché that you can’t manage risk if you can’t measure, analyze and forecast it. Yet, very few organizations know—at any instant—what their risk exposure is. In today’s highly regulated environment and volatile economic times, companies struggle to produce the reporting and analysis needed to comply with regulatory standards...Continue Reading
Do you need data scientists?
Posted by Tom Davenport, Independent Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics
I’ve recently been doing research on the rise of the data science function and the data scientist role within organizations. To say the least, it has been fascinating to talk to people who are intimately involved in the management of big data within their firms. In general, I have found that they are hybrids of data management specialists and quantitative analysts...Continue Reading
Increase your project success rate
Posted by Neil White, Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Organizations are increasing the success rate of complex projects by better predicting project performance. How? Predictive Project Analytics (PPA). Although they are a strategic imperative, major capital investments bring new risk and costs to the business...Continue Reading
Raise your pricing IQ
Posted by Ranjit Singh, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Many businesses have trouble measuring their pricing IQ. They can't identify which products are performing well and which aren't. While a high pricing IQ lets businesses take the next step toward wealth creation, low economic intelligence leaves them hard pressed to make choices, design plans or make strategic decisions....Continue Reading
Next best offers – the “new” old school
Posted by John Lucker, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
In a recent Harvard Business Review article* that I co-authored with Tom Davenport and Leandro Dalle Mulle, we considered the idea behind retailers developing strong strategies around “next best offers”. Gone are the days when a familiar salesperson could help you find just what you wanted – simply because she knew your preferences and tastes...Continue Reading
The trail of digital exhaust
Posted by JR Reagan, Principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Do you ever wonder about the trail of digital information you are leaving behind every time you go online – your “digital exhaust”? This social data is powerful, not only from an individual perspective but from a big business one. More and more, I find myself in conversations with clients around the importance, power and challenges of this digital exhaust...Continue Reading
Moneyball inspiration
Posted by Jane Griffin, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and US Deloitte Analytics Leader
On a recent trip to Singapore, I had the pleasure of joining some colleagues and clients for a private screening of the movie “Moneyball.” While I’m very familiar with the story, which is well known in and outside of the analytics world, I was excited to see how it was conveyed on the big screen -- and the great cast didn’t hurt either...Continue Reading
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