When data activity was broken down into high levels of analysis and high levels of collection, the results showed that data collection is of little use without subsequent analysis: businesses conducting high levels of data analysis - for example using regression analysis, data mining and text mining - were 11% more productive than the average. High levels of data collection resulted in no increase in productivity.

The report also found that businesses performing deeper analysis were associated with higher profitability: firms conducting more analysis on their data generated an additional profit of £3,180 per employee.

Lastly, businesses giving their employees greater autonomy to make decisions reported a “productivity premium from data use” that was almost four times higher (16% above average compared to 4% above average) as those with centralised decision making.

(Image source:Unsplash.com)