One can easily imagine Amazon and other like-minded companies building out more and more tech-enabled strategic and operating capability—linking the pieces. Financial services companies have made a promising start, and we are also seeing signs that other sectors—healthcare, life sciences, media, and entertainment—are waking up to the possibilities. The snag is that using predictive analytics in this way will be difficult for global companies with traditional compliance-centric and business intelligence reporting capabilities. Rigid, rules-based enterprise systems, installed in most companies 15 or 20 years ago, can’t easily be re-jiggered to integrate data and “mine” for patterns. Current enterprise technologies, and the business processes they support, are so hard-wired in most big companies that shifting to a more fluid, fast-paced, way of operating will be a major transformation.
The onus is on the senior leaders at these firms to demand predictive insights at the executive table and within core management processes by:
Investing in enabling data infrastructure and advanced analytics just as they would top talent, a new product innovation, or a strategic relationship
Embedding predictive analytic approaches throughout the organization—from the front line to the C-suite
Advocating their use both formally (as performance requirements) and by example, to move the organization’s focus from planning and coordination to analytics-driven and anticipatory
Holding these analytics to the same standard of precision, performance and improvement as management and key processes.
Predictive analytics is bringing new levels of speed, relevance, and precision to decision making. Prediction as a mode of engagement and insight will increasingly be a requirement for setting strategy. The companies and executive teams advancing, mastering, and integrating prediction as core to how they evolve strategies and manage will be the distinctive performers and leaders of the future.