We often hear about the need for IT organizations to scrub their dirty data. How much of a problem is data integrity? Harris: Data integrity is absolutely a huge issue if you don't have it. The integrity of data in the average corporation is getting better overall. The reason some of these executive dashboards failed is that they tried to put a pretty face on some pretty bad data. But it's a continuing challenge for organizations. Data cleansing isn't very fun. But (leading) companies pay a lot of attention to ensuring they have the cleanest, most accurate data they can have.

Speaking of dashboards, some CIOs complain that CEOs and other executives have demanded these tools to view and act upon daily or weekly operations data -- but then either ignore the dashboards or use them lightly. What's the disconnect here? Davenport: We make the distinction between reporting activities and analytical activities. Dashboards are purely reporting oriented. There's no model that describes which non-financial factors drive financial performance and so forth.

One of the things we advocate to people who drive reporting are what are the underlying analytical models that make those dashboards more meaningful. Hilton Hotels determined that for every 5% increase in customer loyalty this year they generated a 1% increase in revenues the following year. Making the information meaningful can help generate more interest in these dashboards.

You devote a chapter of the book to analytical people. What are some of the successful characteristics of CEOs who get this? Davenport: In the really analytical companies, CEOs are really driving things. They need to be really passionate about this topic and do more testing and make decisions based on analytics and facts as opposed to intuition. If you're the head of marketing or HR or supply chain, it's a question of asking, 'Should my function be using analytics in a more aggressive way? What's the way that we could build some distinctive capabilities and gain competitive advantage using analytics?'

What are some improvements that CEOs can make to better leverage analytics? Harris: One of the things we found very consistently (among leader companies) is instilling a fact-based culture in your organization. You don't want people to be making decisions by the seat of their pants, you want them to be based on facts. That's one thing an executive can do: foster a climate of fact-based decision-making.