Analytics for Management

Good piece in the ACM, full text linked to below. And further it is not only about classical analytics but also about the emergence of cognitive aspects of AI in this space.    These approaches are more closely connected to the actual decisions that managers make. And how those decisions link together into a decision process.   We are not completely there yet, but approaching.  Management decisions are always a sequence of decisions, by multiple people,  in context.  That's not expressed enough in the below.

Analytics for Managerial Work  By Vijay Khatri, Binny M. Samuel 
Communications of the ACM, April 2019, Vol. 62 No. 4, Page 100
10.1145/3274277

A 2014 IDC report predicted that by 2020, the digital universe—the data we create and copy annually—will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes.10 With the explosive growth in organizational data, there is increasing emphasis on analytics that can be used to uncover the "hidden potential" of data. A 2014 Society for Information Management survey found analytics/business intelligence to be #1 among the top 15 most significant IT investments in the prior five years.12 It is not surprising that business analytics is increasingly central to managerial decision making within business functions: finance, marketing, human resources, and operations. For example, cash-flow analytics, shareholder-value analytics, and profit/revenue analytics are increasingly important aspects of the finance function. A 2017 survey of chief marketing officers found companies spend 6.7% of their marketing budgets on analytics and expect to spend 11.1% over the next three years.16 A 2017 Deloitte survey of HR managers found over 71% of the surveyed companies see people analytics as a high priority.3 Analytics is increasingly used in operations management for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, spare parts optimization, warranty management, and predictive asset maintenance. Acknowledging extreme deficiency of data literacy among today's managers, by 2020, 80% of organizations will embark on data-literacy initiatives.  .... "