This book examines issues related to the alignment of business strategies and analytics. Vast
amounts of data are being generated collected stored processed analyzed distributed and
used at an ever-increasing rate by organizations. Simultaneously managers must rapidly and
thoroughly understand the factors driving their business. Business Analytics is an interactive
process of analyzing and exploring enterprise data to find valuable insights that can be
exploited for competitive advantage. However to gain this advantage organizations need to
create a sophisticated analytical climate within which strategic decisions are made. As a
result there is a growing awareness that alignment among business strategies business
structures and analytics are critical to effectively develop and deploy techniques to enhance
an organization's decision-making capability. In the past the relevance and usefulness of
academic research in the area of alignment is often questioned by practitioners but this book
seeks to bridge this gap.Aligning Business Strategies and Analytics: Bridging Between Theory
and Practice is comprised of twelve chapters divided into three sections. The book begins by
introducing business analytics and the current gap between academic training and the needs
within the business community. Chapters 2 - 5 examines how the use of cognitive computing
improves financial advice how technology is accelerating the growth of the financial advising
industry explores the application of advanced analytics to various facets of the industry and
provides the context for analytics in practice. Chapters 6 - 9 offers real-world examples of
how project management professionals tackle big-data challenges explores the application of
agile methodologies discusses the operational benefits that can be gained by implementing
real-time and a case study on human capital analytics. Chapters 10 - 11 reviews the
opportunities and potential shortfall and highlights how new media marketing and analytics
fostered new insights. Finally the book concludes with a look at how data and analytics are
playing a revolutionary role in strategy development in the chemical industry.
