After lunch at the analyst summit and it’s time for a customer panel involving BMW, Business Analytics Services and Omnicom Group hosted by Les Rechan of IBM. BMW’s initial analytics work was around diagnostic data analysis in the quality area and has grown into a larger corporate analytics with over a hundred projects centered around customer satisfaction. Omnicom Group is a decentralized holding company with hundreds of ad agencies and other companies around the world. Their initial analytics effort was around financing, changing the way they handled forecasting and financial planning. Now they have 150+ planning implementations, are focused on rolling out mobile and broad more general use of business intelligence not just planning.
Key points from the discussion
- Critical to show management the power of business analytics, especially by showing the success of those who use analytics to drive better decisions.
- BMW focus on lots of small analytic “apps” rather than larger efforts as this drives self-service and empowers people to solve their own problems.
- Speed is critical. Getting answers, decisions, quickly is essential as most people don’t ask for data or analytics until they need to make a decision.
- Omnicom found that creating a set of common components for the 50-60% of shared needs helped roll out in a very distributed company.
- Central groups don’t have to be large to have an impact given effective use of external consultants and people in specific silos.
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