Ireland Inc will Sink or Swim in Tidal Wave of Data

Predictive analytics delivers up to 20% in competitive advantage
Managers spend 2 hours a day looking for information

Dublin, Ireland, 13. June 2008 -  Dublin, Ireland, June 13th, 2008- Irish companies who fail to recognise the growing importance of analytics as a ‘must have’ business tool could see their competitive advantage eroded, a global expert in analytic solutions told Irish businesses today. According to SAS Ireland, international and European companies are already embracing analytics which gives them specific individual insights into their customers and, in turn, helps them to predict customer needs and continue to ensure customer retention. Dr John Brocklebank, SAS’ Director of Analytic Solutions, who was in Ireland today, said that the amount of information and data worldwide is doubling every 11 months and that, by 2010, it will double at a phenomenal rate every 11 hours*. The majority of Irish companies are ill-equipped to deal with this rapid growth in data and, most importantly, to leverage it meaningfully as part of their business growth strategy.

According to Dr Brocklebank, “data volumes are reaching overwhelming proportions; the challenge for Irish companies is to capture and exploit the 1–2% of information that is truly relevant to their decision-making processes and strategic objectives. We know that, on average, managers spend two hours a day looking for data and that more than half of this is useless to their decision making process. Most frightening is that 42% of managers say they accidentally used the wrong information to make a decision at least once a week. So never mind trying to deal with the data in its entirety; it needs to be made meaningful and accurate to support business decisions. From a global perspective, only companies that manage and exploit their data to its fullest will be able to use it as intelligence to make meaningful decisions. Irish companies are now facing a stark choice – either build competitive advantage around sophisticated analytics tools or get ready to drown in a tidal wave of data.”

“Analytics used to mean backward looking reporting; now it is forward looking and deals with predictive analysis and forecasting. It’s all about achieving business growth and developing strategies built on expectation of potential trends. That’s where the market leaders are at now using this technology,” says Dr Brocklebank.

In contrast, companies who use predictive analytics to forecast purchasing trends, customer switchers and potential fraud see their businesses grow significantly by being able to make better business decisions that result in offers or services specifically tailored for their customers.

While Irish businesses currently lag behind in developing enterprise-wide strategies to make better and more informed decisions, a cultural change is starting to take hold with companies increasingly turning to business analytics tools to build competitive strategies that create relevant relationships with customers and deliver tangible competitive advantage.

Dr Brocklebank notes that the use of analytics has become more sophisticated in recent years internationally. “Business Intelligence is now a commodity that every business should already have – the new competition differentiator is predictive analytics; and those companies employing it are taking market leads. It is now a key driver of corporate performance for some of the world’s leading companies such as Amazon, Capital One, UPS, Cemex and Tesco.”

“It can be no coincidence that Tesco, one of the first companies to really embrace this predictive analytics technology, has grown from being the 2nd largest retailer in the UK to the 4th largest retailer in the world – all in a period of time when its club card became their number 1 selling tool. Some 9 million individual Tesco coupons tailored to each individual customer’s spending patterns and predicting potential purchasing trends are issued by Tesco every quarter”, says Dr Brocklebank.

“Across the entire spectrum of the Irish economy from retail to banking, manufacturing to entertainment and healthcare to education, organisations can deploy predictive analytics to position themselves more effectively to compete in today’s fast-paced global economy, which demands greater agility and smarter, quicker decision making,“ he adds.

In order to compete effectively on a global stage, Dr Brocklebank maintains that Ireland Inc must work harder toward embedding a culture that embraces business analytics, building necessary enterprise-wide infrastructures and promoting analytical skills. He states, “Companies that succeed in leveraging the benefits of business analytics tend to invest heavily in skilled analysts. Above all, they tend to demonstrate leadership and buy-in from senior management and a commitment to making analytics and fact-based decisions key elements of their business strategy.”

Notes:
* By 2010, the world will produce almost 1,000 exabytes of digital information per year according to market research firm IDC. 1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes or 1 trillion megabytes (1,000,000,000,000,000 kilobytes).

ENDS

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
Siobhan Molloy/Eoin Quinn    Tel: (01) 676 01 68
Weber Shandwick    or 086 8175066 / 087 2332191

JOHN BROCKLEBANK

John Brocklebank is Senior Director of Research and Development at SAS. He is responsible for the development of SAS® Solutions OnDemand, the SAS ASP offering centered around analytical CRM (customer relationship management). Components of this application include Strategy, Data Mining, Personalization and Reporting. He was the initial product development director for SAS Enterprise Miner software and Manager of Statistical Training in the Education department of SAS, where he taught and managed the statistical curriculum development.

Co-author of the book, “The SAS System for Forecasting Time Series,” Brocklebank holds a Ph.D. in Statistics and Mathematics, an M.S. in Biostatistics, and a B.A. in Mathematics. He has served as Adjunct Professor of Statistics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC.

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