Across industries, respondents see the use of data and analytics increasingly upending the competitive landscape. Forty-seven percent say that data and analytics have significantly or fundamentally changed the nature of competition in their industries in the past three years. While this middling figure indicates we’re still in the early days of the shift, it increased a whopping 38 percent since the previous survey. When asked which competitive shifts they’re seeing, respondents most often cite new entrants launching analytics-based businesses—as they did previously—but also note that other changes are quickly becoming more commonplace (Exhibit 1). For example, respondents are almost 2.5 times more likely than before to report traditional competitors launching entirely new data and analytics businesses and pooling their data via a shared utility. Forty percent also note that companies are forming data-related partnerships along the value chain, a 91 percent increase from just one year before.

Despite the rise of a range of competitive threats, the results indicate that many companies are still scrambling in their efforts to address them. Four in ten respondents say their companies have only responded to these changes in an ad hoc fashion.³