A Step-by-Step Plan for Getting Your Company Started with Predictive Analytics Posted on : Oct 09 - 2015

Are You (Your Company) Part of the 80% or the 20%? 

No matter how you add up the figures, Gartner reports that at most 20% of companies are engaged in real data science and predictive analytics.  And that’s what’s reported by Gartner ‘responders’ who are more analytic-savvy and larger than most.  The last definitive figure I saw from Gartner was 1 in 8 or about 12% have actual advanced analytic programs.  That means your odds of being part of a company with no advanced analytics at all are probably north of 80% or 85%.

Are You Big Enough to Benefit?

What’s the smallest company that can benefit from advanced analytics?  We illustrated in a recent article that even a company with only a few thousand customers could benefit from some types of predictive analytics for only a few thousand dollars (link here).  Realistically though, the cost threshold for a real program starts around $750,000 to $1 Million.  That’s enough to fund a team of four or five including data scientists and supporting IT staff and analysts.

You make the call.  Our estimate is that you need revenue north of $50 Million and probably more like $150 Million to make this commitment.  However, we also estimate that you’ll be making multiples of your $1 Million investment in revenue and margin within two years.

Where and How to Get Started

The greatest barrier to the 80% of non-adopters is simple, they don’t know where or how to get started.  There is so much unfamiliar jargon, so much press about multiple exciting new opportunities, and so much perceived risk of starting at the wrong place or taking the wrong direction that it keeps many companies from even starting out.

So to make this as simple as possible for the largest number of companies, we present this Step-by-Step Plan for implementing advanced analytics, to get the biggest return with the smallest reasonable investment. View More