There has been a lot of talk about Analytics in the Blogsphere & Articles - I got onto the train with the article by Scott Maxwell, I came across this when I was doing some research for a presentation I was making at a B School, subsequently there have been quite a few interesting posts out there, listed below are excerpts from some of them. On another note I must say I was quite impressed that the B-School for an MBA with a Marketing specialization had an specific course on CRM Analytics, I think all schools need to include this as a course, this will go a long way in propagating the Analytical Culture. Also I read Tom Davenports article in HBR called - "Competing with Analytics". The theme was summarized well in this paragraph "We are seeing that industry after industry is beginning to heavily invest in enterprise data Analytics. At a time when firms in many industries offer similar products and use comparable technologies, business processes are among the last remaining points of differentiation. And Analytics competitors wring every last drop of value from those processes. Some companies have built their very businesses on their ability to collect, analyze, and act on data. I also wrote therein, while competing on Analytics means competing on technology, these forward looking organizations apply technology - with a mixture of brute force and finesse - to multiple business problems, while directing their energies toward finding the right focus, building the right culture, and hiring the right people to make optimal use of the data they constantly churn."Tom Davenport has a follow up article up at Optimize, here are a few excerpts from the same: "Sadly, the majority of companies pursuing optimization have failed to deliver the analytical capabilities necessary to make their strategies succeed. Although most large organizations, and many small ones, have business-intelligence (BI) tools in place, these are typically marginal to the success of the business and are managed at the departmental level. However valuable such tools may otherwise be, they're invisible to senior executives, customers, and shareholders, and they don't propel the competitive strategy."When I studied 32 companies that were at least somewhat focused on analytics and BI, I found them at various stages of analytical orientation (see chart). The percentages of companies at each of these stages are by no means representative of any larger population; I intentionally sought out companies at the higher end of the analytical spectrum. I found five stages of analytical competition: Stage 1-Major barriers. Stage 2-Local activity. Stage 3-Vision not yet realized. Stage 4-Almost there. Stage 5-Analytical competitors. Analytical Culture: The adoption of a broad analytical approach to business requires changes in culture, process, behavior, and skills for multiple employees. Such changes don't happen by accident; they must be led by senior executives with a passion for Analytics and fact-based decision-making. Ideally, the primary advocate should be the CEO, and indeed I found several chief executives who were spearheading the shift to Analytics at their companies. For example, Loveman at Harrah's is constantly asking, "Do we think, or do we know?"-and goes so far as to warn his employees they can be fired for not conducting a test before undertaking a major initiative. But CIOs can help in this regard, too. They can work with their executive peers to decide which behaviors are necessary, and how to elicit them. An interesting quote on all this Analytics stuff by the Deal Architect - "For all the left brain stuff these Analytics deliver, organizations still need their right brain functions."List of some of the blog posts out there on this topic: 1. Sadagopan - 1, 2, 32. Geoff Moore 3. Beyond VCPrashanth RaiTag(s):Analytics