Businesses are using analytics to make more informed decisions and to plan ahead. It helps businesses to uncover opportunities which are visible only through an analytical lens. Analytics helps companies to decipher trends, patterns and relationships within data to explain, predict and react to a market phenomenon. It helps answer the following questions:

• What is happening and what will happen?
• Why is it happening?
• What is the best strategy to address it?

Collecting large amounts of data about multiple business functions from internal and external sources is simple and easy using today’s advanced technologies. The real challenge begins, when companies struggle to infer useful insights from this data to plan for future. Using analytics businesses can improve their processes, increase profitability, reduce operating expenses and sustain the competitive edge for the longer run.

A typical analytics project or engagement is generally divided into the following four stages:

• • Stage 1 – ‘Research’ where the analyst helps to identify and understand the problems and issues that the business is facing or would be encountering in the future. At this step there is significant interaction between the management team and analysts.
  • Stage 2 – ‘Plan’ where the analyst helps decide what type of data is required, sources from which the data is to be procured, how the data needs to be prepared for use and what methods to be used for analysis.
  • Stage 3 – ‘Execute’ where the analyst explores and analyzes data from various angles. The analysis paves way to interesting results that are shared with the management. Based on these results, strategies are formulated to tackle the problems identified in stage 1.
  • Stage 4 – ‘Evaluate’ where the analyst measures the results of the strategies formulated and executed. This stage helps learn and revise future strategies and processes.

A strategy built using analytics is a set of simple implementable recommendations that efficiently uses the information drawn from the data. An effective and efficient strategy suggests best use of the available business resources.

It helps to find solutions for some of the biggest problems faced by the company. The process followed to formulate the strategy might be complex, but the final result is actionable and useful for management.

The resources and time required for an analytics project is dependent on a number of factors. The major factors being the scope and scale of the project, readiness and availability of required data, understanding of the analysis tools, skills and knowledge of the analytical team and most importantly, acceptance and approval from the management team to carry on the analytics project.

The analytics team generally defines a project timeline dependent on the factors listed above. Intermediary findings and analysis difficulties might alter the goals and objectives of the project. This might require the team to re-work the time and resources required for completing the project.

011 Digital would be happy to provide you an estimate of the resources required to complete the analytics project and goals that you have in mind for your organization. Please contact us with details of your project.

Data is the most important resource for any analytics project hence the business should make sure that it captures its business and customer data in a structured manner. This will ensure that company has all the relevant data in the most usable form and can help the project move along quickly.

Delays in analytics projects generally take place when the data rendered to the analytical team is not usable in its current form. The data needs to be structured, cleaned and mined to make it usable. This step can take from hours to days to months depending upon the size and form of data.

011 Digital would be happy to talk to you more about the state of your data and more specifically how ‘ready’ it is for analysis projects. Please contact us with details of your project.