Can analytics really make a difference to the bottom line? Tom Davenport, consultant, Babson College professor, and author, thinks so. In this Viewpoint, Davenport describes how marketers can succeed with analytics, how organizations make progress on the journey to analytical competition, and how organizations employing marketing analytics achieve high performance.

Key Takeaways

• Become an analytical competitor by making analytics and fact-based decisions key elements of your strategy and competition.
• Get away from only reporting. The ultimate goal is to answer the question, “What’s the best that can happen?”
• Companies that are more analytical tend to perform much better than less analytical companies do.
• To become a more analytical marketer, focus on five things: data, enterprise, leadership, targets, and analysts.