Ventana Research is the first research company to benchmark the maturity and direction of decision making and performance management that is a critical process in every organization. Ventana Research believes that enabling a streamlined process of utilizing business analytics and planning for optimizing performance is critical. Shortening the time and reducing the risk associated with making effective business decisions is a challenging undertaking. It requires improving existing business processes and technologies. And doing so requires an analysis of the interaction between management and business analysts in order to understand how to accelerate collaborative decision-making.

Ventana Research has undertaken a comprehensive benchmark of the use analytics and information for decision making and performance management across business analysts, management and executives. Ventana Research believes that decision-making processes in your organization, its information requirements and the barriers you see to improving performance by improving analytics and technologies should be improved. We believe that companies should align applications with their people and processes to improve their analysis and planning functionality. Unfortunately, most companies have not invested into the needs of business analysts that play a critical role supporting the decision making needs. Even in companies that have made significant investments in business intelligence, the majority of organizations still use spreadsheets and email to optimize performance and struggle to communicate and collaborate to plan and improve.

We assessed how organizations are using and advancing their business analytics as part of their set of analytics and planning processes through use of technology and information. This research will help executives and managers to better understand how to improve their efforts with specific knowledge on best and worst practices. It will enable you to determine how to align their organization’s people, processes, information and technology to improve performance. Ventana Research believes that with proper planning and execution, companies that deploy business analytics and planning technologies for decision making can achieve a competitive advantage.