Green lights were flashing all over the place (in my mind) as I read the researchers’ description of the Collaborative path to transformation, in the research report, “Analytics: The Widening Divide,” published by quarterly journal MIT Sloan Management Review in collaboration with the IBM Institute for Business Value. (See related QlikView blog post, “Are You Transformed?”)

According to this study, organizations take one of two paths to transformation:

• The Specialized path can lead to well-defined gains. In organizations that take the Specialized path (slightly >50% of the Experienced organizations surveyed), deep analytic expertise is developed within lines of business or specific functions using a wide array of analytical skills and techniques. They use analytics to improve specific business metrics. Information management is siloed, improvement of analytical skills and tools is a passion, and data-oriented culture will require extra momentum.
• The Collaborative path crosses organizational boundaries. Organizations that took the Collaborative path (slightly <50% of the Experienced organizations surveyed) create an information platform and enable users to develop and share insights across lines of business. They use analytics to improve enterprise objectives.  Information management is an enterprise endeavor, analytics skills and tools are not fully developed, and a data-oriented culture has emerged.

In organizations on the Collaborative path, people have a willingness to share and accept data and insights from other parts of the organization. They are adept at using visualization techniques and using dashboards that provide snapshot views of performance. People who are not accustomed to working with huge volumes of data can still interact with information and make analytically-based decisions, with user-friendly tools.

How do you know if you are on the Collaborative path? Organizations on this path are twice as likely as organizations that take the Specialized path to provide customer-facing employees with access to data and insights, and are almost 3X more likely to use analytics to guide future strategies. They are twice as likely to provide insights to anyone in the organization who needs them.

In this report, the researchers describe one of the challenges of pursuing the Collaborative path is waiting too long to get the data into its “ideal state” before acquiring tools and skills to analyze it. This is just one of the areas where QlikView shines. For an organization to begin deriving value from QlikView, the data doesn’t have to be in perfect condition yet. In fact, many of our customers use QlikView to assess data quality and identify issues in the data, and QlikView has built-in ETL tools to assist in the cleanup process. It is common for organizations to get up and running with QlikView apps in weeks if not days.

While QlikView is used in all kinds of organizations, at every stage in the MIT researchers’ analytics maturity model, it is a particularly perfect fit for organizations on the Collaborative path to transformation. With its collaborative analytic app creation model and the new collaboration capabilities in QlikView 11, QlikView is well-suited for organizations where people work together to make data-driven decisions. (See related blog posts, “Social Business Discovery with QlikView 11” and “Remixability and Reassembly with QlikView.”)