Validating the Pillars of Business Analytics: Toward a Generic Business Analytics Maturity Model

This study lays the groundwork for developing a generic Business Analytics (BA) maturity model by identifying and empirically validating the key criteria needed for assessing and improving analytics capabilities. First, a thorough literature review was conducted, resulting in a set of 49 BA‐relevant criteria spanning organizational, strategic, cultural, and technical dimensions. Next, these criteria were incorporated into a quantitative online survey, which attracted 74 total responses from participants drawn across diverse industries and company sizes. Analysis of the responses revealed that most participants strongly endorse BA’s importance, with no statistically significant link emerging between perceived importance and either industry or company size, implying that BA maturity transcends sectoral and organizational boundaries. A subsequent factor analysis of the survey data grouped the 49 criteria into six primary domains, Data Architecture and Technological Infrastructure, Data Governance and Risk Management, Workforce Competency and Project Management, Data-Driven Processes and Insights, Data Stewardship and Stakeholder Engagement, and Business Organization and Objectives, collectively explaining 48\% of the total variance. These findings confirm the centrality of leadership, governance, workforce skills, and technological underpinnings to BA maturity, with respondents also anticipating continued growth in BA’s relevance. By combining a rigorous literature review, empirical validation, and factor analysis, this research provides a clear roadmap toward an evidence‐based BA maturity model, facilitating data‐driven decision‐making across industries and organizational scales.