Enablers and Mechanisms: Practices for Achieving Synergy with Business Analytics

Abstract

Business Analytics (BA) systems use advanced statistical and computational techniques to analyze organizational data and enable informed and insightful decision-making. BA systems interact with other organizational systems and if their relationship is synergistic, together they create higher-order BA-enabled organizational systems, which have the potential to create value and gain competitive advantage. In this paper, we focus on the enablers and mechanisms of synergy between BA and other organizational systems and identify a set of organizational practices that underlie the emergence of BA-enabled organizational systems. We use a case study involving a large IT firm to identify the organizational practices associated with synergistic relationships that lead to the emergence of higher-order BA-enabled organizational systems.