Analytics, a business function that is growing rapidly in prominence, truly embodies the N=1, R= G philosophy. Analytics helps drive innovation, as it looks within an organization's data for actionable insights that provide revenue-enhancing solutions.

A classic use of analytics is marketing analytics -- mining the ocean of customer behavior data to help serve them better. Marketing analytics is accomplished through the use of advanced analytical techniques like predictive modeling and artificial intelligence.

Here's how analytics enables N=1, R=G:

1. Marketing analytics helps organizations generate customer and business insights from existing data that truly help in understanding customers better. Analytics aids consumer centricity and allows companies to move away from the "undifferentiated consumer" toward N=1.

2. Analytics truly operationalizes the N=1 vision by understanding both customer transactions as well customer attitudes in perspective (vs. in silos), leading to actionable microsegments of consumers that can be very specifically targeted for attractive return.

3. Further, competency in analytics stems from familiarity with quantitative methods, which is a skill set abundant in various pockets of the globe (South East Asia, Eastern Europe, etc.). U.S. firms are realizing this and setting up analytics centers of excellence (as captive or third-party organizations) in these geographies -- a true case of R=G.