What are examples of good use cases where data and analytics can have a big impact?

In supply chain, data and analytics can have a significant impact at reducing waste while simultaneously reducing costs. For example, advanced analytics can be used to (1) identify anomalies that could signify poor operating procedures that result in waste, (2) identify stores or restaurants where there is a consistent oversupply of product or food, and (3) identify signals in data that help generate probabilistic models to create a more robust and resilient supply plan. Similarly, in marketing, advanced analytics can help guide marketing spend and promotional decisions to optimize across revenue, foot traffic, and profit.

Risk identification and mitigation involves integrating bespoke data sets and is time and energy intensive. Some firms resort to reporting the perception of business managers against risk dimensions. Any reporting or analytics can therefore be extremely biased and subjective. The feedback or opinion of a business manager could be biased by factors such as the recency effect. Risk management cannot thrive on perceptions alone; it has to be a lot more empirical, factual and reliable to make any business sense. There are many more use cases that one may explore in finance or HR. However, if the cake is not baked well, there’s no merit in putting a cherry on top.