Between September 25 and September 27, BSG Concours hosted the second Research Summit of Business Analytics Concours at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Companies from a very wide range of industries were represented—including health care, banking, financial services, insurance, chemicals, tourism, beverage, energy, and IT.

Participants were pleased with the program and were looking forward to the next summit in March. On the last day of the conference, one participant summed up his approval of the overall impact of the conference on his approach to Business Analytics: “For every $50,000 we invest in this project, we get $150,000 back in value. Getting a chance to hear these talks and to meet people who are dealing with the same analytics challenges we are facing is a great opportunity for learning and gaining confidence in broadening the analytics operations in my own company.”

Tom Davenport was the featured speaker and opened the session with an overview called “competing on analytics,” which is also the title of his latest book. Other speakers included the BSG Concours' own Bob Morison as well as the co-author of Competing on Analytics, Jeanne Harris from the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business.

For the two and one half days, participants in the summit listened to presentations, broke up into small discussion groups, and participated in panel discussions. One point the participants seemed to agree upon was the belief that business analytics (also referred to as “business intelligence”) was on the verge of becoming something more important and more pervasive in all kinds of businesses and for all kinds of business processes—from marketing to human resources; from operations to supply chain management. One pervasive question that participants brought up in the conference was how best to demonstrate the business advantages of business analytics to people who were not highly trained analysts themselves.

Also discussed was the maintenance of the business intelligence applications in a panel on the topic of “model management.” Another panel explored the challenges of “finding analytical talent.”