How to act now to be successful in the future? Digital business models

Digital business models created around data are producing a winner-take-all market, not a digital divide. That’s why leaders need to “stop doing analytics for analytics’ sake, focus on the business problem, and define and ask the big questions of your data,” warns disrupting digital business author Ray Wang in 10 Enterprise Analytics Trends to Watch.

The Constellation Research founder and principal analyst notes that digital leaders are now grabbing 70% of overall market share, and more than 75% of profits. A Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report that features insights from Wang warns brands of “an existential imperative; those companies that do not evolve into data-driven organizations will be supplanted by those that do.”

For most, a long way to go and a short time to get ghere

The inflection point for the data-driven enterprise report, based on a survey of 729 business leaders conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, shows that while 90% of respondents say they’re confident that their organizations will achieve its vision of a data-driven enterprise, most have an alarmingly long way to go:

• While 86% say the ability to extract new value and insights from existing data and analytics applications is very important, only 30% say their organization is currently very effective at doing so.
• While 78% say accessing and combining data from a variety of external data sources is very important, just 23% say their organization is currently very effective at doing so.

And those new digital business models that are, according to Ray Wang, creating a winner-take-all market? Only 28% of respondents say that introducing new business models is a key goal of their evolution into a data-driven organization. For leaders this is key to digital transformation, says Wang. For the remaining 72% that don’t have new business model creation or business model evolution as a goal, there’s simply no time to wait.

“This is a top-down strategic business model decision that boards have to address,” says Wang. “Boards aren’t doing their jobs because they don’t understand the problem: they’re in a data war, and data is the weapon."

Leaders are moving further ahead, faster

In 10 Enterprise Analytics Trends to Watch, Wang notes that you’ll also see analytics leaders applying artificial intelligence for business agility and scale. This automation and augmentation when it comes to data and insights is set to move leaders and fast followers even further ahead when it comes to digital transformation.

“The situation in almost every market is that executives realize that they need to transform. They want to start using artificial intelligence, for example,” says Wang. “But they don’t realize that these changes happen along a continuum. It’s an intensive, multi-year process.”

As the next decade looms, the race is on to make the most, and more than competitors, of data. Is your 2020 vision for data and analytics clear?

''Every board member and CEO needs to understand that data assets have to be managed the same way they manage any other asset. If they don’t, they will be disrupted.'' - Ray Wang, Constellation Research

Source: Microstrategy