More-accurate decisions

In surveys of companies using analytics, Thomas Davenport, a professor of IT and management at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., said he found that data analysis is helping them optimize key business processes such as setting prices and identifying valuable customers.

"Most of the time, analytic decisions are more accurate than those that are made with the gut," Davenport said, adding that success requires widespread use in an organization.

And senior executives need to be squarely behind such an effort, said Gary Loveman, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas-based Harrah's Entertainment Inc.

When Loveman came on board in 1998, Harrah's was struggling and had become a takeover candidate, he said. Loveman responded to those threats with a plan to use analytics to build customer loyalty -- a plan so important that Loveman postponed work on projects that were not focused on customer loyalty.