Survey shows most organizations don't have plan to assess their analytics maturity

According to a new INFORMS survey of 230 business, government and academic representatives released today, the concept of "analytics maturity" is important or very important to their businesses (65 percent). Yet, 82 percent of those same respondents admitted they do not have a plan, model, or any other mechanism in place for measuring the efficacy or maturity of their analytics best practices over time.

Some 47 percent of those surveyed attributed the lack of analytics maturity modeling to the fact they don't believe it will help their businesses thrive, while 21 percent said they cannot afford an analytics maturity model solution.

"The ability to fully assess the maturity level of an organization's analytics best practices is paramount to their efficacy," said Aaron Burciaga, senior manager, operations analytics at Accenture. "With more access to information than ever before, organizations must have a strategy in place for how they leverage data and analytics, and assess the maturity of their programs to empower decision making and drive organizational strategy."

Other survey findings are:

• For those organizations polled that do have an analytics maturity model or process in place, 72 percent are only assessing their analytics practices by certain departments, but are not looking at the maturity of their analytics holistically.
• 52 percent of those same respondents said they have not made any changes to their approach or best practices based on the input they have received from the analytics maturity model they are using.
• Finally, 80 percent say the model they are currently using does not allow them to benchmark their analytics maturity against their peers.

In another announcement made today, INFORMS announced the launch of a unique new Analytics Maturity Model that is designed to help organizations of all sizes scrutinize the way they are using analytics across the business, and determine how they can improve their best practices over time. Whether an organization is in its initial stages of using analytics to improve business processes or is at a more advanced level, the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model approach helps assess strengths and weaknesses across an organization in three important areas of analytics: the organization itself, its analytics capabilities and its data and infrastructure.