This book examines issues related to the alignment of business strategies and analytics. Vast amounts of data are being generated, collected, stored, processed, analyzed, distributed and used at an ever-increasing rate by organizations. Simultaneously, managers must rapidly and thoroughly understand the factors driving their business. Business Analytics is an interactive process of analyzing and exploring enterprise data to find valuable insights that can be exploited for competitive advantage. However, to gain this advantage, organizations need to create a sophisticated analytical climate within which strategic decisions are made. As a result, there is a growing awareness that alignment among business strategies, business structures, and analytics are critical to effectively develop and deploy techniques to enhance an organization’s decision-making capability. In the past, the relevance and usefulness of academic research in the area of alignment is often questioned by practitioners, but this book seeks to bridge this gap. Aligning Business Strategies and Analytics: Bridging Between Theory and Practice is comprised of twelve chapters, divided into three sections. The book begins by introducing business analytics and the current gap between academic training and the needs within the business community. Chapters 2 - 5 examines how the use of cognitive computing improves financial advice, how technology is accelerating the growth of the financial advising industry, explores the application of advanced analytics to various facets of the industry and provides the context for analytics in practice. Chapters 6 - 9 offers real-world examples of how project management professionals tackle big-data challenges, explores the application of agile methodologies, discusses the operational benefits that can be gained by implementing real-time, and a case study on human capital analytics. Chapters 10 - 11 reviews the opportunities and potential shortfall and highlights how new media marketing and analytics fostered new insights. Finally the book concludes with a look at how data and analytics are playing a revolutionary role in strategy development in the chemical industry.

In order to establish and maintain a successful company in the digital age, managers are digitally transforming their organizations to include such tools as disruptive technologies and digital data to improve performance and efficiencies. As these companies continue to adopt digital technologies to improve their businesses and create new revenues and value-producing opportunities, they must also be aware of the challenges digitalization can present. Business Transformations in the Era of Digitalization is a collection of innovative research on the latest trends, business opportunities, and challenges in the digitalization of businesses. Highlighting a range of topics including business-IT alignment, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), business sustainability, small and medium-sized enterprises, and digital entrepreneurship, this book is ideally designed for managers, professionals, consultants, entrepreneurs, and researchers.

The "Greatest Business Book of All Time" (Bloomsbury UK), In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table. Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful. Joining the HarperBusiness Essentials series, this phenomenal bestseller features a new Authors' Note, and reintroduces these vital principles in an accessible and practical way for today's management reader.

Most companies waste billions of dollars on technology. Don't be one of them. If you need the best practices and ideas for unleashing technology's strategic potential--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are eight inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place. This collection of HBR articles will help you: - Clarify corporate strategy with your IT department - Fund only IT projects that support your strategy - Transform IT investments into profits - Build one technology platform for your entire organization - Adopt new technologies only when their best practices are established - Use analytics to make smart decisions at all levels of your company - Integrate social media into your business

Technology is constantly changing the way enterprises conduct business by optimizing current practices. As information technology continues to evolve and become a prevalent feature in day-to-day activities within organizations, it has become necessary to manage these technologies in order to meet the strategic objectives of an organization. Strategic IT Governance and Alignment in Business Settings investigates emergent research methodologies involving the application of information technology in organizations. Focusing on best practices, implementation issues, and empirical research within the field, this book is ideally suited for researchers, academics, students, and practitioners interested in the governance, strategy, architecture, and management of information systems.

Learn how to harness the power of information technology to transform your organization with this groundbreaking model. Developed by the Sloan School of Management's Center for Information Systems Research, this model provides a step-by-step framework for achieving strategic alignment and driving organizational change. This book is an essential read for anyone looking to leverage technology to achieve business success. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

"New edition of best-selling classic by top HR thinker--an essential addition to your HR bookshelf"--Resource description page.