The Art of Winning an Unfair Game or better known as Moneyball, is a true story about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane. It’s focus is the team’s analytical, evidence-based, sabermetric approach to assembling a competitive baseball team, despite Oakland’s disadvantaged revenue situation. The book and movie argue that the Oakland A’s’ front office took advantage of more analytical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball. By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately US$41 million in salary, were competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spent over US$125 million in payroll that same season. Through the help of sabermetrics, The A’s build a winning team by spending less. They saw who to pick up, who would strengthen their weaknesses, who will be a playmaker for the play that make the biggest difference.
The Athletics finished first in the American League West with a record of 103-59.They are remembered mainly for winning twenty consecutive games. The streak, which lasted from August 13th to September 4th, remains the longest in American League history.
It worked and is still working to this day for MLB teams. It changed the way they do business.
You may be reading this and ask “What does this have to do with me and my business?”
Sabermetrics is most commonly known in the business world as data analytics; that’s how this relates to you and your business. (I am, by far, not the first person to have figured out this correlation between the two.) The question is, do you know how analytics can improve your team and business?
Like it or not, business is often a competition. There may be a lot of other company’s in your league or maybe just a few, but you are in competition with them. Business analytics can help you level the playing field and win against any of your competitors, let alone the big guys on the block. It can save your company millions and make you more.
How? How can your company crunch all that data and numbers to know what is the winning combination? Okay, hopefully you have the skill and talent to know which numbers matter. But, how do you calculate all the variables from so many different place within your organization. This is where BI will do the work for you. This will help to dramatically increase your company’s productivity. BI (Business Intelligence) consists of modules that have the capability to calculate and store metrics, KPI’s and build / design reports using that data. There are a few different types of BI tools available, some as easy as upgrades to existing tools, to new software and data warehousing. Most are web & Excel based solutions. An Excel-based report writer can connect directly to your ERP, CRM systems or other data sources with all information flowing to a data warehouse or Excel. An Excel based BI tool has a quick learning curve and is very cost effective. Depending on the amount and kind of data one is looking to manipulate there are more advance tools. They are a quick, low risk implementation and some are completely managed by the business users. They may be set up for an automatic import or you can perform one-time or occasional imports. Basically if you have data that needs to be filtered and that will be helpful to understanding your business there is a solution that will fit.
Analytics have been proven to work. If you are not using them, you can bet your competitors are. So if you are in competition and want to win—use Business Intelligence to see how to, where to, and when to win.
To learn more about BI and it’s valuable impact on your business, contact Mark at sales@ktlsolutions.com or by calling our main line at 301.360.0001
MARK LAWRENCE | Sales Executive
Mark has over 10 years of experience in providing technology solutions. Starting with Monster World Wide in Tempe, AZ. After a few years working with National Accounts, Mark was promoted and relocated to the DC area as the Enterprise Sales Representative for the Mid-Atlantic. Here, he was the main Monster contact for Fortune 1000 companies such as Philip Morris, Dollar Tree, Volkswagen of America and Smithfield Foods, just to name a few. Mark was also a consultant to these companies by providing services such as recruiting and HR solutions from the hiring process to out placement service and applicant tracking systems. Mark joined KTL in 2014. With his background and experience in understanding and providing technology to specific needs and challenges for non-profit and other organizations, he has become an asset to KTL’s accounts department.
