Analytics is changing the way businesses work. Being able to understand and interpret data is a key component to making the best decisions for your organization. Some data scientists have begun exploring the concept of analytics maturity models, meant to help businesses understand where they are in their ability to use analytics effectively and what steps they need to take to be able to take full advantage of the power of analytics.
Understanding your analytics maturity is particularly useful for HR teams since the application of analytics in human resources is more recent and still developing. Many HR teams and CHRO’s are in the early stages of understanding how HR analytics can help their business and figure out what programs and people they need to make analytics work for them and their needs.
How mature is your human resource analytics? Knowing these two models could help.
Here are some analytics maturity models to help you understand where your business might be in your analytics process.
Devenport Analytics Maturity Model
Thomas Devenport was one of the first people to make the concept of analytics maturity popular. In an effort to help businesses understand where they are and where they might need to go in terms of analyzing data effectively, he wrote a book titled Competing on Analytics, meant to help businesses understand that analytics is a great tool for any part of a business to embrace to help them gain a competitive edge. His levels of analytics maturity are as follows:
- Analytically impaired: These companies have some data management tools and a developing interest in analytics.
- Localized analytics: Interest in analytics extends to executive teams and some basic analytics tools may already be in place.
- Analytics aspirations: Resources are devoted to executing analytics across business departments and plans are developed to build a greater analytics capacity.
- Analytical company: Analytics has established across the enterprise and leadership views analytics as essential to doing business.
- Analytic competitor: These companies are not only using analytics but widely benefitting from their analytics capabilities.
Gartner Analytics Maturity Model
The Gartner analytics model is similar. Noting that many businesses are slow to adopt meaningful analytics processes, Gartner notes that the typical analytics maturity model follows the following progression:
- Basic: Analytics is piecemeal and often inaccurate, managed mostly in spreadsheets and only used to react, not act.
- Opportunistic: Attempts to formalize data and processes are made, but often inconsistent. Leadership is not necessarily supportive or instructive towards what changes would be beneficial and should be made.
- Systematic: A vision or strategy has been created and executives have begun to support the overall mission.
- Differentiating: Best practices around data usage and analytics have been established and implemented. Data and analytics help to drive innovation and businesses are able to effectively use analytics methods to understand business ROI for multiple departments, including marketing, sales, HR, and more.
- Transformational: At this level of analytics, effectively collecting, analyzing, and understanding data and its implication is fundamental to overall business and strategy. Data is often used not just to understand the day to day business decisions, but also to help understand how resources should be used and what investments should be made. A company at this stage will often bring on a data officer to help work as a member of the executive team, shape strategy, and work as a liaison between various business units.
According to Gartner’s data, less than 10% of businesses see themselves at the systematic level or above. Where does your company rank in analytics maturity? Does your HR team have analytics in place to help you acquire the best talent and analyze the performance of your people?
Find out more about how you can get started your analytics journey now.
