Role of Executive Sponsors in business analytics success – Understanding their influence domains using Deductive Thematic Analysis

ABSTRACT Analytics success has delivered superior customer value, higher revenue growth, and enhanced profitability to organizations. However, a large percentage of organizations in each industry has failed to realize such analytics success. Past studies have identified the antecedents of success and failure of business analytics projects. Executive Sponsorship was rated as among the top-success enablers. There has been limited attention to how executive sponsors influence business analytics success. To demystify Executive Sponsor’s role, we applied Deductive Thematic Analysis to the narratives recorded from key informants for 21 successful and 20 failed analytics projects covering 14 industries. This study identified four influence domains that span the project lifecycle and recommends the Executive Sponsor’s involvement in each of these. The influence domains are Project Initiation, Organization culture, User trust, and Deployment enablers. Our informants found the influence domains comprehensive to explain the outcomes of their projects. The influence domains can help articulate the role of the Executive Sponsor better and set expectations. They can also be used to analyze projects, identify causes of failure, and plan corrective actions.