The Analytics Movement: Implications for Operations Research

Abstract

The movement toward the increased use of analytics in organizations has generated much discussion by academics and professionals about the impacts and opportunities that analytics offers. Although operations research (OR) has been a driving force in applying quantitative and analytical models for organizational decision making, it is less clear how we as OR practitioners can take advantage of the surging interest in analytics to promote the OR profession and expand its reach. In this paper, we discuss the drivers of the analytics movement, an example of an analytics project, and the opportunities and implications for OR, i.e., the problem scope, models and methods, implementation issues, organizational role, professional skills, and education.