Maturity of the Data Analytics Practice

Understanding what analytics capability you need as a business is important and once done, you also need to understand where you are and how you can upgrade your team to the level required.

In essence, you need to understand the business big picture in order to build a high performing team that allows you to maximise business value.

Mature analytics teams are generally those that are:

• Goal-oriented and highly commercial
• Prioritised, proactive and have strong analytical reasoning capability
• Robust, productive and future-looking
• A good balance between complexity and value

Whereas less mature teams have the basic skills but are: 

• Pure number crunchers
• Limited understanding of the data and its value
• Unstructured and ad-hoc in approach
• Task rather than strategically focused                                                 

It is key when looking at this that you establish what level of maturity and capability you are at and where you want to be.

Once you have a view, you need to identify how you can move your team through the levels to reach the level your business needs it to be and the time that journey might take.

Finally and critically, do you have senior management commitment? This is probably more critical than any other element and the one that most businesses often only pay lip service to.

Are you ready for the change?