OREANDA-NEWS. Dell Digital Business Services and the International Institute for Analytics (IIA) today released research assessing the maturity of medium and large enterprises to implement analytics solutions. The results underscore the important role analytics and big data play in enterprise operations, business processes, and how analytics is helping to speed up many business decision-making procedures. The report is the second of the annual research originally conducted in 2014, allowing year-over-year comparison. 

Adoption rates and awareness of benefits of advanced analytics increased year-over-year

Business leaders are looking for new ways to employ advanced analytics to help make better, more informed business decisions and ultimately, gain a competitive advantage.

“As confirmed in the research, the smart use of advanced analytics can enable a huge competitive edge and have a real impact on an organization’s bottom line,” said Raman Sapra, executive director and global head, Digital Business Services, Dell. “At Dell Services, we believe business should precede any technology decisions when it comes to analytics. This business-first approach will not only help companies improve efficiency and customer engagements but will capture new opportunities for growth and success.”

With the increased awareness of the benefits of analytics, the firms that have implemented or are currently implementing analytics are also willing to invest more to further the success of their programs.

  • Approximately half (49 percent) of all business and IT decision-makers surveyed anticipate gaining a competitive advantage in the future due to successful data mining (up from 38 percent in 2014)
  • 38 percent of respondents (up from 30 percent in 2014) believe that advanced analytics plays a critical role in their operations in 2015
  • 40 percent of business decision makers are more likely to agree that they could gain a competitive advantage using advanced analytics than a year earlier (up from 28 percent in 2014)
  • 70 percent (up from 63 percent) of enterprise firms reported being more likely to invest more than $500,000 on analytics solutions in 2015
Awareness and maturity levels for analytics in healthcare and the midmarket gaining tractionFor the first time this year, the report took a closer look at the healthcare industry. The report shows high awareness of strategic importance and maturity of advanced analytics in this vertical: nearly 9 out of 10 healthcare firm decision-makers believe that advanced analytics is an important part of their business strategy and 65 percent of respondents rated their firm’s analytical maturity as “high” or “highest.”

Much like the other organizations surveyed, healthcare respondents mentioned that a Chief Information Officer most frequently drives the assessment and development of their firm’s analytical capabilities. More than three in every five healthcare organization reported that they use insurance claims and demographics data most often to augment their analytics data.

“Analytics are becoming the strongest value lever for organizations to differentiate and become more operationally efficient across different industries”, said Ankur Pawa, director and global head, advanced analytics, Digital Business Services, Dell. “Quite uniquely, it is an initiative that is self-funded; operational analytics help take out costs which are getting put back into innovative revenue generating analytics programs.”

The report also shows that the gap between medium and large enterprises is closing fast with both large and medium-sized organizations stating that their perceived maturity levels have risen year-over-year. However, the rise was more significant in the midmarket with firms perceiving their maturity level as “high” jumping from 29 percent in 2014 to 46 percent in 2015.

Research methodology

The research was commissioned by Dell and executed by the International Institute for Analytics™ (IIA) to study the current adoption of advanced analytics and Big Data landscape among firms in the United States. The study focused on advanced analytical maturity at the firm level, trends and usage of advanced analytics and Big Data, and execution of advanced analytics projects among mid-market and enterprise organizations. This study was originally conducted in 2014, with the second phase fielded in the fall of 2015.

The report compares research findings from each year; 2015 results include insights from 304 business or IT decision makers for mid-market and enterprise organizations from a range of industries and functions, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, Information Technology (IT), and telecom.