Case Studies

With the COVID-19 impact on our lives increasing exponentially over the past few weeks, here at Burtch Works we’ve been working to provide as much information as we can to the professionals and employers that we work with about how this crisis is changing the business world.We recently teamed up with the IIA (International Institute for Analytics) to survey analytics professionals, and you can read more about the survey methodology and first week’s results in our recent blog post here.This post shares data gathered from over 150 analytics professionals across the US, with the survey taking place from April 1st – April 3rd 2020. A PDF report version can also be downloaded for free here, which includes information about the sample segmentation.

Impact to Analytics Workload

As of 4/3, most respondents are saying that things are still either business as usual or not disrupted too much. Only 6.7% of analytics organizations have been asked to drop everything and focus on analytics related to the crisis.

Impact to Staffing & Hiring

Although many analytics organizations have not seen an impact to their hiring and staffing yet, 7.4% of respondents have seen a substantial impact, and there was a slight increase in layoffs from week 1 to week 2.

Use of Analytics to Address the Crisis

Reassuringly, 36.3% of analytics organizations view analytics as being front and center in helping their company navigate the crisis. So far, only 19.3% of respondents are seeing their organizations decide to move so quickly that they don’t take the time to make use of analytics.

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 responders.

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

With many organizations are still making adjustments as the COVID-19 crisis spreads, our survey shows that many analytics organizations have not been too heavily impacted just yet. However, it is extremely likely that this may change significantly and quickly, especially depending on the length of the economic impact. Our aim in surveying professionals week by week is to detect these changes as they happen, so stay tuned for more results!