Embracing analytics for a better competitive edge

In the fortnightly series entitled 'Engage SMU profs', Associate Professor Kam Tin Seong of the School of Information Systems, addressed some questions on whether SMEs should aim to be analytics enterprises rather than make decisions by hunches and copy what their competitors are doing. He also discussed some of the key success factors for SMEs which harness business analytics to be more competitive. He commented that business analytics is a business-driven and data-centric decision support tool focusing on discovering actionable understanding of business issues and pains. It makes extensive use of statistical techniques, data visualisation, data mining and predictive modelling to drive business decision and strategy-making. It is a way for companies to compete in an increasingly uncertain and rapidly evolving business environment. Business analytics is still new within the SME community and in general, it has been perceived as an expensive version of statistical package, due mainly to a lack of proper understanding of how business analytics will transform the way they do business. At least three critical success factors, namely The Orgware, data and the manware need to be acknowledged before SMEs jump on the business analytics bandwagon.