A 2011 joint study by MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM Institute for Business Value reports a growing divide between those companies that are transforming themselves to take advantage of business analytics and those that have yet to embrace it.
A survey of business executives, managers, and analysts from organizations around the world indicated that 31% of organizations are "aspirational users" (basic users of analytics), 45% are "experienced users" (moderate users of analytics), and 24% are "transformed users" (strong and sophisticated users of analytics).
Furthermore, 62% of the transformed-user organizations indicated an intense level of focus on using analytics to better understand and connect with customers, as did 49% of the experienced-user organizations and 34% of the aspirational-user organizations. (Data extracted from "Analytics: The Widening Divide, How Companies Are Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Analytics," IBM Global Business Services, October, 2011.) If an organization is known to have an intense level of focus on using analytics to better understand and connect with customers, what is the probability that the organization is a transformed-user organization?