Developing Business Managers’ Skills for Data-Driven Decision- Making

The ongoing digitalisation of business operations continues to increase the amount of data available for organisations. As a result of this transformation, organisations are investing in business analytics tools and technologies to facilitate the use of this data in their decision-making. The existing business analytics literature suggests that the tools and technologies alone do not guarantee success in such endeavours, as organisations also need to have other types of resources, such as human skills and data-driven organisational culture, to form coherent set of business analytics resources that enable them to leverage data and business analytics technologies in their decision-making. While previous studies have recognized the importance of business analytics skills as the enablers of data-driven decision-making in organisations, they have focused mainly on the skills of analytics professionals who manage and run business analytics related operations, rather than the skills of business managers who use business analytics and its output to support their decision-making. Based on empirical data collected through 36 semi-structured interviews, the objective of this study is to identify the skills business managers need for using business analytics in their decision-making. Additionally, the study identifies several practices applied by organisations to help their business managers develop such skills. Contributing to the extant business analytics literature, this study highlights the importance of business managers’ skills in making data-driven decisions by applying analytics-based output to support their decision-making and thereby offers new insights for both scholars and organisations concerning the prerequisites for using business analytics in managerial decision-making. Besides bringing concrete and practical ideas for organisations to develop the skills of their business managers and to seize the value from their business analytics investments, our findings also help the educational professionals to design programs for the future business managers in universities and other educational institutions by increasing their understanding on the skillset required from their students.