“Analytics is rapidly emerging as the next management discipline. Rather than relying on intuition when pricing products, maintaining inventory, developing marketing campaigns or hiring talent for example, use predictive analytics from Accenture Analytics to deliver the improved insights and outcomes that drive high performance”.
Descriptive Analytics is also known as Business Intelligence
Predictive Analytics is Business Led and Technology Enabled and helps understand what the data means the “So What”
Informed Decisions mean Better Business Results
“In this elastic world, high performance hinges on the ability to gain insights from data. Informed executives make more insightful decisions that deliver improved business outcomes across the enterprise.
Overview
Analytic capabilities underpin the most important imperatives C-suite officers face today:
Driving growth—from new markets, new customer segments and opportunities, marketing transformation and innovation.
Enhancing cost and cash advantage—through balance sheet efficiency; enhanced working capital; better capital allocation and return on investment; and resetting structural costs for more flexibility.
Improving operational excellence—by realigning the operating model; reengineering key processes; focusing on lean processes and operational effectiveness; and sourcing operational excellence.
Restructuring the business at scale—through M&A, divestitures, consortia, industry restructuring, value chain restructuring and business ecosystems.
Winning the war for talent—by re-skilling the workforce, sourcing new talent, developing change agents and creating a human capital strategy”.
Accenture is positioned as a Leader in Business Analytics IT Consulting and Systems Integration Services, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) MarketScape Report.
May IDC MarketScape Report cites strategy, innovation and delivery as key Accenture strengths.
So Predictive Analytics is about having the capability to analyze and mine company data stores in order to predict future trends and forecast probabilities.
The organization will typically take the following approach:
look in the Rear View Mirror to determine What Happened
drill into the data to establish Why it Happened
then apply this insight to predict What Will Happen Next
For me the key differentiator is whether the organization has the ability to outperform their competition by implementing Predictive Analytics to enable the Business to make informed decisions. This is a real world example of how a technology solution is delivering value to the Business.
IT Leaders are struggling with the role and application of Cloud Computing.
Explore the topic of IT Cloud Decision Economics.
IDC has developed a new Cloud Decision Tool.
Access to the Tool is provided on a complimentary basis.
“IDC’s new Cloud Decision Economics tool, the Cloud Decision Framework Tool helps inform those seeking insights into the application and workload hosting strategies, analyzes private vs. public options and more.
Worldwide public IT cloud services spending is forecast to surpass $55 billion in 2014. Yet IT leaders continue to struggle with quantifying the operational, organizational, and financial implications of their application hosting and platform decisions.
To help IT decision makers to better understand their options and the associated implications as they move various enterprise workloads to the cloud, International Data Corporation has developed a new Cloud Decision Framework Tool.”
“This tool was carefully designed to help guide IT managers in their decisions around on-premise, private and public cloud computing options,” said Joe Pucciarelli, vice president, Technology Financial & Executive Strategies at IDC. “The painstaking evaluation struggles that once plagued the cloud decision-making process have been all but eliminated as the Cloud Decision Framework Tool does all the heavy lifting.”
IDC’s Cloud Decision Framework Tool Helps IT Managers:
Become more agile in the cloud decision making process
Understand and take advantage of the profound technology, platform, staffing, and economic opportunities that will shape IT strategies in the coming years
Identify customer priorities for IT cloud system management software investments
Align business/IT governance around a specific cloud vision
Restructure IT purchasing and sourcing approaches
Evaluate overall cloud goals
“The Cloud Decision Framework Tool allows you to decompose a very complex business decision by breaking it down into its key components. A CIO can use the tool to collaborate with the rest of the executive team and get them on board with moving to a cloud,” commented Allyn McGillicaddy, Principal, Office of the CIO.com
IDC should be congratulated for creating a tool that will help inform IT Leadership in the development of their cloud adoption approach,
The design principles and selection criteria support the decision making process by providing a fact based report against three dimensions – Organization, Operations and Business.
By making the tool complimentary IDC has made it possible for IT Leaders to “open the kimono” of external Service Providers and also to see through the solution vendors inflated claims.
The Cloud Decision Framework will force the Cloud Brokers and Cloud Service Providers to demonstrate how they score / rate against a standard set of publicly available criteria.
So the time has arrived for the Cloud Ecosystem partners to stop being masters of spin and specify exactly how they will deliver speed to value.
My 24th June post was on the subject of Cloud Economics.
The current fiscal austerity and threat of a double dip recession means that there is a burning platform for change across IT enterprises to manage costs whilst enabling future Business growth.
Peter Sondergaard states that the second recession is about to hit which will impact Enterprise IT spending budgets in 2012.
There is a fair degree of consistency in what the research firms / commentators see as the key trends for 2012. I particularly liked what Frank Gens from IDC had to say and I have also picked out the Outside-In messaging from Deloitte and how it resonates with what Ian Clayton has been banging on about for ages. My own observations appear at the foot of the post.
IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020
“Frank Gens presents the IDC outlook for the overall technology marketplace. In 2012, the ICT industry’s shift to its third major platform of growth — built on mobile, cloud, social, and Big Data technologies — will accelerate, forcing the industry’s leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions.
Worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9%, surprisingly solid growth in a fragile, recovering economy. Mobile devices and apps and emerging markets will be the biggest growth drivers, while European debt issues will dominate downside risks.
Emerging markets IT spending will grow 13.8%, driving a whopping 53% of IT growth. In the second half of 2012, China will supplant Japan as number 2 in the IT market.
“Mobility wins” will be the top theme of the year as mobile devices outship PCs by more than 2 to 1 and generate more revenue than PCs for the first time. 85 billion mobile apps will be downloaded, and mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time.
The strategic focus in the cloud will shift from infrastructure to application platforms and the race to build the largest portfolios and ecosystems around those platforms.
Spending on public and private cloud services, and the building of those services (the “cloud arms dealer” opportunity), will reach $60 billion. Amazon will join the $1 billion IT vendor club.
In a mobile, cloud-oriented world, the network is more critical an infrastructure than ever. For 2012, we predict rising demand, disruptive infrastructure shifts (to mobile), intensifying challenges (competition, funding), and expanding opportunities (cloud). In short: a world that will require a lot of adaptability to thrive (or even survive) in.
Big Data will join mobile and cloud as the next “must have” competency as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7ZB (1ZB = 1 billion terabytes) in 2012, up 48% from 2011, rocketing toward 8ZB by 2015. There will be lots of Big Data – driven mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.
Major IT vendors will make “statement” acquisitions in social networking as social technologies become a core part of IT’s next growth platform. Social platform leader Facebook will attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a much broader role serving businesses in B2C commerce.
As the number of intelligent communicating devices on the network will outnumber “traditional computing” devices by almost 2 to 1, the way people think about interacting with each other, and with devices on the network, will change. Look for the use of social networking to follow not just people but smart things.
Much of the money will be made on top of the “third platform” by building highvalue, vertically focused solutions. The buildout of these solutions — in healthcare, energy, government, financial services, and retail — will accelerate in 2012 — leaving IT providers without vertical competency on the sidelines.
Gens concludes by saying that by the end of 2012, we’ll have a good idea which vendors will — and won’t — be among the industry’s leaders in 2020.”
Extract from Deloitte Predicts the Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012
Outside-in Architecture: Flexibility in operating and business models is proving more important. As a result, need to share is colliding with need to know and shifting solution architectures away from a siloed, enterprise-out design pattern and into an outside-in approach to delivering business through rapidly evolving ecosystems.
The fundamental shift in focus required by Service Provider organisations away from the current enterprise-out to a new outside-in approach has long been advocated by Ian Clayton. Ian developed the “Outside-In Service Management™ (OI-SM)” term, concepts, and associated methods and services.
Outside In Thinking For Service Provider Organisations
“The Outside-In Service Management™ (OI-SM) program helps service organizations apply “Outside-In” thinking to service management initiatives, ensuring customer centricity, customer thinking, and the creation of value for customers. OI-SM takes precedent over traditional “inside-out”, process, best practice, technology, capability level and service centric efforts.
Traditional improvement efforts, including most IT Service Management projects, work “inside-out”, focusing on what’s happening inside the service provider or infrastructure management organization, how it works, and using internal performance measures.
Outside-In thinking ensures the organization ‘learns to see’ from a customer perspective, and service management and improvement efforts are driven by understanding what a service does for the customer in terms of enabling and supporting their desired results or ‘Successful Customer Outcomes (SCOs)’.”
Gartner – Predicts 2012: Four Forces Combine to Transform the IT Landscape
This Predicts 2012 special report highlights how the control of technology and technology-driven decisions is shifting out of the hands of IT organizations. New forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending.
Specifically, the forces of cloud computing, social media and social networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. Business unit stakeholders often recognize the value of new technology before IT departments can harness it.
For me, the top three trends for Enterprise IT in 2012 can be summarised as “MoSCo” which refers to Mobility, Social business and Cloud.
Some of my other observations would be:
2012 is not about doing more for less it is about choosing which things you will do and those you have to stop doing altogether. The Business will be directed to cut back on discretionary spending that will impact their key investment decisions. At the same time the Business will need the flexibility to respond quickly to changing imperatives.
In 2012 if the expected service does not meet the perceived service the expectation gap will grow and the Business will go elsewhere. With enterprise mobility will come the need to re-evaluate target service levels which will need to be tiered depending on the device the Business user adopts to access corporate information.
In 2012 there will be increased pressure to craft new and re-negotiate existing contracts requiring best in class Sourcing and Vendor Management capabilities and practitioners within the Service Provider organisation. These SVM professionals must be able to interact with the Business / Procurement whilst actively managing Supplier / Vendor relationships in a multi-sourced environment.
In 2012 the impending “Eurogeddon” crisis will fuel a significant increase in the adoption of cloud based services. As service offerings mature the Business will focus on “Not If, But When” to adopt the cloud especially if it improves project delivery timescales.
In 2012 the Business will examine how, when and what (Infrastructure + Applications + Services) to migrate to the cloud to save cost and resources.
Last Word – I am looking forward to the premiere of “House of Lies” a new American comedy TV show in Jan which is based on the book, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time. Survival of the Slickest indeed.
thisiswhatgoodlookslike 