Suzanne Shep­pard

T&T needs to en­hance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as a means of in­creas­ing its glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port, "tra­di­tion­al sources of com­pet­i­tive­ness gains have been ex­haust­ed, and there is need to in­ves­ti­gate the ways in which we can break this stag­na­tion".

Michelle Cross Fen­ty, coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), says the an­swer is ef­fec­tive use of busi­ness in­tel­li­gence and an­a­lyt­ics, cou­pled with im­proved strate­gic plan­ning, de­ci­sion mak­ing and busi­ness process­es.

"In to­day's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, which is char­ac­terised by rapid, fre­quent and of­ten dis­rup­tive changes, and where busi­ness­es have to be more re­spon­sive to in­creas­ing­ly de­mand­ing cus­tomers and to oth­er stake­hold­ers, firms need ap­prio­r­i­ate de­ci­sion sup­port in­fra­struc­tures in or­der to main­tain and im­prove their com­pet­i­tive edge," she said.

Cross Fen­ty's com­ments came dur­ing a ses­sion yes­ter­day at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness where Phase One of a re­port, In­creas­ing Com­pet­i­tive­ness through Busi­ness An­a­lyt­ics, was re­leased.Speak­ing ahead of a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the top­ic, she high­light­ed the IDB's sup­port for a tech­ni­cal co-op­er­a­tion project to pro­mote use of busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics tools by com­pa­nies to im­prove their de­ci­sion mak­ing and busi­ness process­es.

Cross Fen­ry not­ed that T&T ranked 92 out of 148 coun­tries in the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum's 2013-2014 Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port. She added that in Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean coun­tries suf­fer from low lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and slow pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth rates."Fur­ther­more, the re­port showed that most coun­tries are stag­nat­ing in their com­pet­i­tive­ness per­for­mance," she said.

Cross Fen­ty said she hoped "lo­cal firms would in­creas­ing­ly lever­age in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed through busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics to find ways to de­liv­er bet­ter busi­ness out­comes, in­crease rev­enue, low­er costs and re­duce risk, thus in­creas­ing their over­all com­pet­i­tive­ness".She said she was con­fi­dent the project would pos­i­tive­ly im­pact T&T's com­pet­i­tive­ness. Once com­plet­ed, she added, the IDB has "a high in­ter­est in look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties to dis­sem­i­nate the knowl­edge that will come out of this project".

Busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics in­volves us­ing da­ta, sta­tis­ti­cal and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis, ex­plana­to­ry and pre­dic­tive mod­els and fact-based man­age­ment to dri­ve de­ci­sions and ac­tions. How­ev­er, re­search shows that lo­cal­ly there is min­i­mal use of busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics in de­ci­sion-mak­ing, al­though da­ta from the in­ter­na­tion­al are­na shows a link be­tween com­pet­i­tive­ness, busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics and in­creas­ing lev­els of busi­ness an­a­lyt­ics adop­tion.