ABSTRACT
This chapter helps business executives justify to their management the investment in large-scale analytics initiatives. It covers some of the factors: creating a long-term vision and a multi-year plan to attain it, and alignment with the company’s strategic objectives and critical needs, and choosing pilot projects that are impactful and achievable. Individual companies will vary in complexity demanded of such a financial model. Having brought analytics innovations to large corporations as both an internal team leader as well as a consultant, the chapter emphasizes the importance of creating a cross-functional team before launching a pilot. The presentation is akin to a full business plan including competitive analysis, project roadmap, financial forecast and scenario planning. One option for pilot projects is to try a particular small-scale product for testing. The pilot thus consists of the following components: a working project team of colleagues or clients, specific business objectives, and metrics for evaluation of project success.
