Analytics Maturity and Infrastructure Reliability in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Longitudinal Study
Abstract
Small and medium-sized enterprises increasingly invest in analytics while relying on limited infrastructure teams, creating uncertainty about whether greater analytics maturity is accompanied by more reliable technology operations. We followed 86 SMEs for 18 months, measuring analytics maturity at baseline and every six months alongside service availability, incident frequency, recovery duration, monitoring coverage, and change-failure rate. Organisations with higher initial analytics maturity generally had better observability and lower mean incident duration, but baseline maturity was not independently associated with fewer incidents after adjustment for sector and infrastructure complexity. Improvements in analytics maturity over time were associated with broader monitoring coverage and faster identification of performance anomalies. The strongest reliability gains occurred where analytics initiatives included operational telemetry rather than focusing only on customer or financial reporting. Firms that increased analytics capability without corresponding data-governance practices showed inconsistent results. The study suggests that analytics maturity can support infrastructure reliability when operational data, monitoring processes, and decision ownership evolve together. Simply adopting analytics tools is unlikely to improve reliability without integration into day-to-day operational management.
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