INFORMS and the Analytics Movement: The View of the Membership

Analytics has seen rapid growth in its adoption across a variety of organizations, especially businesses, and many firms now recognize analytics as an important business function that adds value. This trend toward data-driven and analytical decision making presents tremendous opportunities and challenges for OR professionals. As the leading scientific and professional organization for OR professionals, INFORMS must decide whether to stake its claim on the analytics movement. The purpose of this study is to assess the attitude of INFORMS members with respect to analytics and INFORMS' expansion into analytics. The results show that the INFORMS membership overall perceived great benefits and limited risks and thus offered strong support for INFORMS' expansion into analytics. However, the expected involvement of members in INFORMS analytics-oriented activities is more selective. In addition, we found that members' ages, educational levels, and affiliations affect their views on the expansion. The study findings can assist in the formulation of INFORMS' analytics strategy, contribute to its change management process, and help identify areas of focus for analytics service offerings.