Most U.S. Companies Say Business Analytics Still Future Goal, Not Present Reality

Two-thirds of large U.S. companies believe they need to improve their analytical capabilities and only half believe they are spending enough on business analytics, according to findings of an Accenture survey. While more than half (57 percent) of companies surveyed said they don’t have a beneficial, consistently updated enterprise-wide analytical capability, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) said they are working to increase their company’s business analytics usage.

The survey also addressed the balance between using analytics and using judgment to make important business decisions, and found 60 percent of major decisions are based on analytics and 40 percent are not. The reasons executives cited most often as to why 40 percent of major decisions are based on judgment rather than business analytics were: because good data is not available (61 percent); there is no past data for the decisions and innovation they are addressing (61 percent); and their decisions rely on qualitative and subjective factors (55 percent).

The challenge to moving from “gut decisions” to employing data goes beyond just infrastructure investments. Large businesses also face a glaring human resources challenge, as 23 percent of respondents identified “insufficient quantitative skills in employees” as a main challenge to their company, and 36 percent said their company “faces a shortage of analytical talent.”

The survey also found that institutional hindrances need to be addressed to improve business analytics capabilities. For instance, 39 percent of respondents said that IT capabilities restrictions were a major challenge and 27 percent said there was an inability to share information across organizations within their company.

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