Reinvent your innovation process to unlock analytics’ potential

At ORTEC Consulting we believe that Advanced Analytics & Optimization are key for companies to innovate and outperform.

Although your company might have its own approach to innovation, it’s probably similar to the approaches we see at many of our customers. Today, most innovation projects revolve around the use of data and companies typically use a stepwise innovation cycle to work their way through different phases in a pretty traditional way. What if you could reinvent the way you approach innovation to unlock your data’s hidden value? We’re not talking about changing your way of working completely. You can keep your business processes in place, use the supporting software that you have available, and stir analytics into the mix. It doesn’t sound too difficult, does it? And the best thing is the pay-back period will be under a year. Here’s how you can get started.

Adding Analytics to the mix

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You can embrace analytics at every single step in your innovation cycle, but each step has its own value and challenges. We’ve found that there are some best practices you can follow to adopt analytics successfully.

Analyze

Successful innovation starts with business alignment, opportunity identification and business case validation. Are your business strategy, marketing strategy and operations strategy aligned? What are your company goals and where would we find gaps if we look at your current performance? The best thing you can do to get started is to develop and align an (analytics) strategy, identify best practices that match your company maturity level and design your innovation roadmap. This means you should also consider exploratory data analytics to discover hidden opportunities. A solid business case is key to your innovation’s success, so make sure you use a mathematical model to support your decision making and calculate costs, benefits and sensitivities.

Plan

Ultimately, innovation comes down to having a good plan. What are your process, skills, assets and software requirements? How and when should you execute and communicate your innovation? Good project management will always be essential, but requirements no longer need to be a weighty tome. We’re big fans of rapid prototyping: make your blueprint easy to read, and offer quick insights that will promote themselves within your company.

Execute

In many cases, innovation requires a software solution. In all cases, implementing change is the most important step. Whether you’re looking for a solution that is strategic, tactical or operational; dashboarding, forecasting or optimization; production, network design or marketing; mathematical algorithms can always help you optimize your business. Just make sure your ambitions match your company maturity and take one step at the time.

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A successful implementation also requires good change management and making sure that your people have the competences to use the new process and/or solution to its full potential. Invest in training to get your team up to speed and provide the latest analytical knowledge to all levels within your organization.

Analyze all over again

Use a dashboard with descriptive analytics to monitor your progress and share your success within your company. Finally, make sure you start your next innovation project by looking at your analytics!

Analytics at ORTEC

At ORTEC, you’ll find the best people when it comes to mathematics and analytics expertise. We use our algorithms and mathematical models to help you unlock your data’s potential and innovate your business. We pair your domain knowledge with our deep understanding of the possibilities of mathematics and IT to design new business models and generate value. Work with us to embrace(big) data and analytics as a strategic asset in your organization.

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