Analytics is the bridge from data to knowledge to understanding, and to the future. Ongoing digitalization changes business area boundaries, value chains, and business processes, but it also offers a limitless amount of new possibilities. It creates data clouds that expand continuously and hide a great amount of unused capital. By refining this data it is possible to boost the performance of current functions, or conversely, to find completely new business models.

At the core of this book is analytics and knowledge-based management. The narrative runs from the source of data through its analysis and refinement processes to the possibilities of knowledge-based management. The practical operational environment of analytics is thrown open with business forerunners’ interviews that tackle the changes of digital revolution.

As the Chief Digital Officer Miika Malinen from the pet store Musti ja Mirri says: “Digitalism is just a tool to go along with the customer’s everyday life, not an absolute value. In order to fulfill the customer’s needs, you have to know your customers and to understand the value of the whole lifecycle.” This reveals the power of knowledge-based management. Companies that have invested in customer-centric data and data analytics have succeeded in the world.

Digitalism changes value chains and enables both new services and service providers to enter the market. In this book, several current topics have been woven together to an understandable package. Whether it is about customer economy, receipt row information, or omnichannel market basket analysis, the interviews and authors’ backgrounds offer excellent examples to consider. Your organization hopefully already has a named section or a person to take care of the validity and the refining of information for business use.

- Sampo Päällysaho, Managing Director, Clas Ohlson Finland

In the baking industry, you can clearly see the change from industrial economy to customer economy. It is no longer enough nowadays to have the right product at the right place at the right time, but you must know what sort of bread and how much the customer wants to buy tomorrow. The Analytics Journey has a good architecture for the structure of knowledge-based management and the methods to proceed. The book describes in a simple way, how to receive the most significant pieces of information for business-use from huge amounts of data by utilizing analytics.

- Olli Salmivaara, Logistics Director, Vaasan Group

Tuulikki Markkula has had a grandstand view to the digital revolution in the Finnish trading sector company Kesko Oyj. At the centre of her work has been the utilization of customer information in business management and customer dialogue both in different business areas and in K-plus Oy. Her ideas about change have become familiar to many business forces through her columns in a Finnish trade journal. Before becoming an entrepreneur and Senior Adviser in Houston Analytics, Tuulikki Markkula worked for seven years as Customer Relationship Director in Rautakesko Oy.

Since his student days, Antti Syväniemi has had one passion above all: knowledgebased management. As a result of working in the Finnish trading companies S Group and K-Group, he is very familiar with the retail sector. He went through the school of information utilization and knowledgebased management when he worked as Customer Intelligence Director at Kesko Oyj. Currently, Antti Syväniemi is the founder and CEO of Houston Analytics and a known force in the field.