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Dec 10, 2009, by Alex Goldman. NEW YORK -- IBM today released a report tracking the effective use of business analytics at successful businesses. The report, "Breaking away with business analytics and optimization," said that all businesses can differentiate their performance by analyzing data better and by delivering insight to decision makers at all levels of an organization.
Those with a successful strategy "achieve both top and bottom line impact -- especially important in the current economy," the report said.
"Business school graduates understand how to manage cash but don't understand how to manage information," added Ambuj Goyal, general manager for business analytics and process optimization at IBM (NYSE: IBM) in response to a question from InternetNews.com.
Goyal said that graduates learn methods for managing cash, such as return on assets, which measure the performance of cash as an asset when deployed in different places in the business -- performance that otherwise is difficult to measure.
Schooling data
Goyal spoke at Fordham University, which also today announced a
new business analytics curriculum developed in partnership with IBM.
When a member of IBM's marketing team asked "What does all this focus on analytics mean for students?" over Twitter, Goyal had a simple answer: "jobs!"
Evangelos Simoudis, Trident Capital managing director, agreed. The venture capitalist said that of the companies in his portfolio, those focusing on analytics had survived challenging times better and have continued to hire.