The Operations Research / Management Science Blog

Ventana Research, a leading benchmark research and advisory services firm, released a new benchmark research, “Decision-Making and Performance: Improving Essential Business Analytics and Technologies”, which revealed the striking fact that while most organizations wish to optimize their decision-making, only one-third of them are confident in the quality of their analytics.

Today’s organizations are hindered by a lack both of quality information and of effective tools to improve their confidence in their decision-making,” said Mark Smith, Ventana Research’s CEO & executive vice president of research. “The research found that despite significant investments by IT in business intelligence, the majority of organizations still use spreadsheets and email to optimize performance and struggle to communicate and collaborate to plan and improve.”

In those organizations not confident with their analytics, it was discovered that the business analysts, although playing critical roles as a resource for management, are not equipped with the right tools to do their analysis. Spreadsheets, which can be risky to business, are widely used in the organization hierarchy. Information Technology is not providing enough support to business analysts. And organizational issues and manual tasks hinder the effectiveness of analysts.

However, the research also yielded the insight that the use of analytics for decision making is maturing in organizations. Businesses are learning to invest more wisely in their employees, processes and technology to obtain the information and tools they require for analysis.

It seems that Operations Research still has a long way to go.

References
“Ventana Research Finds Disconnect with Business Analytics for Decision-Making“, 24-7 PressRelease, Sep 03, 2008