In the past month I have been swamped with requests for information and speaking dates on analytics. Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris published Competing on Analytics a couple months ago. It really lit a fire. Vendors are calling me asking if I think that they should put money into developing analytic products.

It is about time they woke up.

When I approached them in the spring of 2007 only Oracle, SuccessFactors, Monster and KnowledgeAdvisors joined the Predictive Initiative. On the consulting side only Accenture, Ceridian and Fidelity came in. American Management Association joined up but SHRM turned it down in favor of some social program they wanted to fund.

Vendors are supposed to lead the market. However, on the consulting side the only thing they can see is billable hours. If it doesn't fit that model they don't know what to do with it. Witness how PriceWaterhouseCoopers has buried Saratoga Institute since acquiring it in 2003.

What's Not: benchmarking is rapidly cooling as more people come to realize what I've been saying for a year: the market is too differentiated, fast moving and volatile to make a benchmark worth much. The game is the future, not the past and that is where analytics comes in.

I guess this leaves you and me. So when do you want to start?

Dr. Jac