* Financial processes benefit from the application of multi-dimensional analysis (OLAP) against pre-defined financial categories enabling the setting of goals and measurement of actual business performance related to the stated goals.
* Supply chain processes benefit from constraint-based optimization that has been perfected through the application of operations research techniques. For example, sales and operations planning attempts to balance consumer demand vs. production capacity vs. inventory.
Take customer-centered processes as a case in point. A good model for customer analytics education is at the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale School of Management. I participated in an event last month at the school sponsored by IBM. The event called attention to the IBM Academic Initiative and its investment in the center - providing funds, technology, people and training resources. Faculty and students showed a keen awareness of the changes to the way marketing is done and the need to leverage all available information on customer behavior. The center offers a for-credit course that is more of a directed independent study, rather than traditional classroom learning. The heart of the course is a semester-long project working with a corporation (most recently, a financial software company) related to measuring and analyzing the attitudes of their customers in order to assess the effectiveness of advertising and marketing campaigns. They are interested in using non-traditional sources of customer data, such as unstructured social media content. Students are provided IBM software such as SPSS and Cognos and are trained on the use of the tools and coaching on applying the software to address the problem at hand. Such hands-on learning is the best way to learn how to use analytics effectively in a business process context.
The Yale center and others like it are positioned to change the situation to begin to meet the demand for analytics-knowledgeable IT and business professionals. In a tough job overall market for business school graduates, this approach comes at the right time for students and employers alike.