Abstract The world is full of opportunities; many products are launched almost every day.

However usually lot less survive and others doom. A business manager wants to enhance and optimize the operations of his portfolio but he is helpless since he finds it difficult to make the right decision. Right decision making is the most difficult management function in this complex world of business. The modern day decision making is getting less intuitive with the help of data by making more and more sense of data. This article is an attempt to understand the new world of business analytics, how it can be beneficial and why organizations are adopting it. Business Analytics Globalization, increased business complexity, high risk propositions, explosive growth of data has resulted in a challenging and continuous cycle of inefficiency and operational complexity. In this complex and ever changing economy, the decision support system or the new age business intelligence has become far sophisticated than it was ever before. However many business leader still depend upon their intuitive skills and personal experience to make crucial business decisions.

Business Analytics and Optimization capabilities are the most powerful ally in the new economic environment. It is the science of the predictive information which is based on facts and models which are based on complex algorithms, advanced mathematical & statistical techniques. The business analytics has become an indispensable component of the business intelligence. The term business analytics may not sound as a new term however the way it is influencing the businesses across world is remarkable.

Top-performing organizations are able to more fully exploit business analytics for competitive advantage.

Thanks to the Internet the world has become a swelling ocean full of data. One grand challenge of our age is to find a way to harness that data. And thats where the burgeoning field of analytics comes in. Business Analytics uses sophisticated technology to bring information together and sophisticated algorithms to filter and analyze that information. The outputs can include deep understanding of the workings of the business and its connections to the marketplace, key performance indicators to drive business decisions, dramatic improvements in the performance of the most critical business processes, and insights and innovations that can change the basis of competition.

In a survey of 200+ top business leaders of the world, it was found that most of the organizations are run without lack of the right information. It is not that this information is not available but the problem lies in identifying and classifying the right information. The top class global leaders realize the importance of the analytics, coupled with business process management capabilities can create a great business advantage. Those who have the vision are building intelligent enterprises and they will sooner or later outperform the competition.

Making of an Analytical Enterprise If an enterprise has to tread the path of analytics then it has to dwell certain characteristics which will make them do right thing right.

Awareness - The enterprises people, place, processes, systems, every thing else should be data oriented. They should sense, observe, capture the structured or unstructured data with both hands. Todays enterprise has to collect data not only from their own internal system or applications but also from external applications/systems wherever it makes sense. They should also have the capability to process large amount of data quickly, maintain high quality of data and a single version of truth.

Well Connected Technological Environment - A ideal enterprise would be the one who integrates well its internal/external systems with its various functions, business units, across locations, so as to bring various groups to share and leverage useful information for the mutual benefit. Secondly to take advantage of the data the enterprise should have robust software and hardware systems. No wonder many enterprises uses technologies like Teradata, SAS, super computers to stay superior. Softwares and hardware like these are meant to process millions of data records in just fractions of seconds.

Be Precise - An intelligent enterprise is not who know how to collect the data from internal or external sources but it will be the one who can build the mechanisms and practices for churning the precise information needed. Every enterprise can have voluminous data, what is needed is to find the pearls out of this ocean of data. The raw data should be of high quality and so is the processes, methods, and practices around the data. A well managed Enterprise should be able to prepare and automate the analysis to ensure the quality and timeliness of information and also deliver the information in the contexts relevant to the business needs.

Executive commitment - No enterprise can succeed unless its top management have a common vision. However in order to become a true analytical competitor there is need of the strong commitment towards the use of analytics in the organization. The use of analytics to create a competitive advantage should be part of the broad strategy which the enterprise is pursuing

Focus on Quantitative Objectivity - Analytics is all about the application of the data. It is about finding the trends using data, finding the patterns in the data, creating hypothesis and finding the probability of an event to occur. The software/hardware capability of the organization is useless unless it has the people who have quantitative capabilities and focus. Hence the enterprise should build and develop strong capability for quantitative analysis. It should hire and train the people with statistical, mathematical and analytical backgrounds.

Analytics is just not science; it is art and science both. It is not just numbers, data, analysis. It is about judgment as well however analytics helps to make a better decision. If you ask a pilot if he only relies on gadgets in the cockpit to drive and look around then probably a good pilot says it does not harm to look out through the window. Same thing applies to a decision maker who is going to start realizing the power of analytics.

Further Reading Competing on Analytics (Harvard Press Release) World of Analytics (Harvard Press Release)