Most enterprises prefer gut feeling to analytics, survey suggests

Most blue-chip firms are only scratching the surface of what analytics can do, says Accenture

Enterprises are failing to use data analytics to the full to target, service or interact with their customers, according to research carried out by Accenture.

The report, entitled Accenture Analytics: Customer Analytics Survey, identified that over 50 per cent of blue-chip organisations do not take full advantage of the data analytics capabilities available to them.

In fact, companies indicated that they are just as likely to rely on personal experience or intuition as data analysis when making decisions about what customers want.

"Ten years ago, organisations could get away with relying on intuition to make decisions about how to engage with customers but today's world is wired and interconnected in such a way that customer expectations and influence are greater than ever before," said Julio Hernandez, global lead for customer analytics at Accenture.

"Descriptive and predictive analytics enable organisations to draw fact-based conclusions about what customers are actually doing and what they are most likely to do and need," he added.

"Whether in product features, delivery or price, organisations are leaving money on the table by not applying the power of analytics to these decisions".

Even among organisations actively using analytics, most are not applying it in crucial areas, such as pricing (86 per cent not using), product/service delivery (77 per cent not using) and product development (59 per cent not using).

Accenture points to corporate culture, budgets and lack of senior management support as the main barriers to adopting complex analytical processes.

The findings also suggest that when companies do analyse customers, it is according to their value to the organisation, rather than according to the customers' needs and preferences.

For example, the most commonly used metrics to segment customers include profit per customer (cited by 41 per cent), lifetime value (27 per cent) and how much of a customer's total spend occurs with the company (24 per cent).

"Regardless of how analytically mature they are, most firms largely focus on using analytics to better understand the customer's value to the organisation and much less on the organisation's value to the customer," said Hernandez.

"Organisations will benefit from a more balanced approach to using analytics, one that takes into account what's sustainable for the business as well as what's relevant to the customer."