The New Frontier: Data Analytics
Effective use of data has become the basis of competition in the modern business world given that the concept of creating business value is not new. Businesses have always wanted to obtain insights from information in order to enhance their competitiveness. The focus on deriving insights from information is a critical factor in enhancing competition since it promotes better, factual, smarter, and real-time decision making among businesses. Recent technological advancements have played a crucial in businesses’ pursuit for improved decision-making in terms of obtaining insights from data/information. As a result, data analytics has emerged as the new frontier in enhancing the competitiveness of business organizations. The demand for enhanced business decisions has contributed to the growth of big data platforms and tools. This paper examines the use of data analytics by Caesars Entertainment to enhance competitiveness.
Definition and Overview of Evolution of Data Analytics in Business
Data analytics is a concept that refers to process of collecting, organizing, and evaluating data sets in order to identify patterns and other useful information (Ernst & Young, 2014). Data sets that are analyzed through data analytics processes are usually large and disparate volumes of information that are created by people, machines, and tools. Data analytics requires the use of new, innovative and scalable technological tools to collect, organize, and evaluate data sets to obtain meaningful information. For business organizations, data analytics help in obtaining real-time business insights with regards to customers, performance, risks, productivity management, profits, and shareholder value addition.
The concept of data analytics is not new in the business world because business organizations have through the years been looking for ways to obtain insights from information in order to enhance their decision-making processes. While this concept is not new, it has gained considerable traction in the recent past because of rapid technological advancements. These technological advancements have increased access to information among business and customers. The improved access to information has in turn enhanced the need for businesses to improve their decision-making capabilities in order to enhance their growth and success. As a result, business organizations have been involved in the development of big data analytics tools to enhance their decision-making capabilities (Ernst & Young, 2014). The increased creation of big...
One of the major periods in the history and evolution data analytics was in the early 2000s when Analytics 2.0 was developed in Silicon Valley, which prompted the application of unstructured information (Handfield, 2013). This generated a new role in the business field known as Data Scientist to help in transforming unstructured data into useful information for businesses.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Data Analytics
An example of a company that utilized data analytics in its operations is Caesars Entertainment, which is an American gaming corporation that is headquartered in Paradise, Nevada. The company owns and runs various hotels, casinos, and golf courses under different brands. The advantages of using data analytics at Caesars Entertainment include improved and better decision making, cost reduction in terms of storage of large volumes of data, and enhanced creation of products and services that meet customers’ needs. These advantages emerge are attributable to the fact that data analytics enhance the company’s value proposition. The other advantage brought by enhanced value proposition due to the use of data analytics by Caesars Entertainment is improved competitive advantage over its rivals. Caesars Entertainment has gained significant competitive advantage over its rivals through using data analytics tools to improve and support its business strategy.
However, there are some disadvantages of the use of data analytics by this company including additional difficulties in business operations because of challenges in finding the appropriate data analytics tools that enable the firm to generate value (McKinsey & Company, 2016). Moreover, the company experiences challenges in streamlining the integration of these tools in business processes because the technology is changing and evolving rapidly. Therefore, these challenges generate numerous operational difficulties that could have negative impacts on the company’s profitability and competitiveness in the market. The other disadvantage of using data analytics at Caesars Entertainment is difficulties in recruiting and retaining a base of talent within the organization. This disadvantage emerges from the fact that competition for analytical talent has increased significantly and made it difficult for organizations to recruit and retain the best analytical talent in their workforce (McKinsey &…
