Tackling Lack of Motivation in Aspirational Analytics Companies: SME Examples from the Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Establishing business intelligence analytics (BIA) in small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises is a pervasive problem. SME's - the majority of businesses - play an important role in creating jobs, but research is primarily focused on large corporations. The authors worked with small manufacturing companies at the aspirational capability level but found that their motivation to introduce BIA was low. They had many business challenges but perceived the obstacles (primarily cost and effort) as too great, and their priorities were with operational issues. A two-phase approach based on a well-known analytics maturity model was devised to help raise company motivation. The article describes three studies in different companies using variations of the approach. Comparative analysis of the cases shows that demonstrating a clear path to improved functional efficiency is key to improving motivation, and that simple, easy to learn tools can provide these insights at little cost.