IIA/Burtch Works COVID-19 Analytics Impact Survey Results: Week One
Given the current global crisis, both Burtch Works and the IIA (International Institute for Analytics) have been receiving a lot of questions from professionals regarding how other analytics organizations are being impacted by the crisis and what actions they are taking to respond.We’ve partnered up with IIA to survey the analytics community and gather information on what is happening, and plan to reach out over the next several weeks to monitor changes in this fast developing health and economic crisis in order to allow you to stay informed.As part of our commitment to providing you with relevant information in these unsettling times, I believe that Burtch Works is in a unique position to leverage our contacts and give back to the community. While individual responses to the survey will be kept anonymous and confidential, any and all information, insights, and reports generated from this survey will be available for free, you can participate in the survey here.This post shares data gathered from over 300 analytics professionals across the US, with the survey taking place from March 25th – March 27th 2020. A PDF report version can also be downloaded for free here.
The Methodology
IIA and Burtch Works sent a link to the survey to our communities via both an email blast and social media channels. The results are based on those who answered. This methodology was used to maximize speed, but it also means that we cannot assess whether the responses are an unbiased representation of the analytics community.We have also asked each respondent if they are willing to provide updates over time so that we can accurately track trends. This means that future trending information will represent actual changes within the same cohort of respondents as opposed to impacts due to a different set of respondents. A large number of the respondents are providing a personal email, which will allow us to still track people even if they are laid off or furloughed.
About the Sample
Each respondent was allowed to choose one or more industries that their organization does business in. Therefore, the percentages represent the percentage of total industry names mentioned. They do not represent the percentage of respondents since many respondents chose more than one industry.
Organization Profile, Revenue, and Analytics Organization Size
The majority of respondents come from large companies (68.7%).
Each large company was also asked about its total revenue and analytics organization size. For small companies and startups, it would be expected that both revenues and team size would fall into the lower end for each. While these numbers represent only large companies, it can be seen that there is a wide spread in terms of revenue and analytics organization size.
Impact to Analytics Workload
One area of potential virus impact for analytics organizations is disruption to the typical ongoing analytics and originally planned special project workload in place before the virus broke out.
Impact to Staffing & Hiring
More layoffs and furloughs are being announced by the day. However, as of 3/27, most analytics organizations are not yet feeling the crunch.
Use of Analytics to Address the Crisis
We also asked professionals whether their organization has been viewing analytics as an integral part of navigating this crisis.
What is Working Well and What Is Not?
The survey asked people to provide thoughts in their own words about what is working well and what is not during the crisis. A few of the more insightful comments are listed below in Tables 1 & 2. The examples listed also represent concepts that were mentioned by multiple respondents.
What Analytics Have Been Requested as a Result of the COVID-19 Crisis?
A lot of unusual and interesting analytics are being requested of analytics organizations during the crisis. The survey asked about the most interesting requests thus far. A few of the most intriguing answers are listed in Table 3.
Conclusion
While the crisis is in its early days and it is hard to predict where it will head, the results of the survey show that analytics organizations thus far have not been heavily impacted. However, it is very reasonable, if not necessary, to assume that the impacts will grow and become larger and more widespread in the coming weeks and months.By surveying analytics professionals over the coming weeks, we hope to be able to show changes as they’re happening and provide this free information back to the community. If you want to help us gather data on how this pandemic is affecting the analytics community, please take the survey and opt-in to future updates here.