Anna Forrester
David Court, a director at McKinsey & Company, believes companies that want to explore the potential business impact of data analytics must undergo a strategic transformation that involves planning, restructuring and frontline development.
Court wrote in a piece for McKinsey Quarterly’s January 2015 issue that management teams should optimize the use of new analytics technology and adapt the organization to integrate new processes.
He highlighted the need to address cultural hindrances or fear of change and pave way for automation, digitization and other process improvements.
“An organization that quickly adopts new tools and adapts itself to capture their potential is more likely to achieve large-scale benefits from its data-analytics efforts,” he said.
These tools include targeted solutions, self-service and machine learning.
Court also indicated that enterprises experience several challenges to scaling up their data analytics efforts.
He said many managers are wary of expanding analytics investments due to minimal initial impact to business resulting from open-ended extraction of insights.
They also do not have enough confidence on or understanding of analytics and revert to legacy workflows and processes, or have core processes that go through several levels of management approval, Court said.
Companies will need to work on change management, job redesign and cultural transformation to overcome these challenges, he concluded.
