As companies strive for success in the digital age, it’s essential that they keep abreast of the innovation happening in the world of analytics and business intelligence (BI). By understanding the trends that are set to take the ever-evolving field of analytics by storm, organisations can be one step ahead in the race to innovate.
That’s why TIBCO Software conducted a global survey on innovation in analytics, examining the current pervasiveness of BI and analytics technologies, and the future trends that organisations are looking to embrace.
Collating responses from over 600 CXOs, SVP/VPs, managers, and directors, the survey found that the types of analytics and BI technologies that companies employ vary greatly and largely depend on where they currently are in their journey to digitally transform their business.
As organisations look to transform, they must look to implement a new wave of technologies. While cloud technologies, BI and analytics, along with application and data integration are key foundational technologies, the graph above shows a clear acceptance of the need to embrace more disruptive technologies. The Internet of Things, AI/ML, open source, and blockchain were frequently referenced, highlighting how companies must be prepared to shift focus and move toward these more disruptive technologies in order to successfully progress to the next stage of their digital transformation.
When examining the most prominent BI and analytics tools currently in use, the survey provided results that might be of surprise to some. Instead of featuring a handful of prominent use cases for analytics and BI, respondents to the survey showed an almost equal distribution among the use cases for such technologies.
Undoubtedly, BI and analytics play a pivotal role for companies across different use cases, providing invaluable insight into how to use their data in meaningful ways. However, the equal spread of use cases is quite remarkable. BI and analytics have clearly become pervasive technologies and are proving essential to digital transformation, thanks to better decision-making and innovation. But what lies ahead?
2020 and beyond
The question, therefore, is what is next on the horizon. How will the next wave of innovation in analytics manifest itself? And what are the trends to look out for in 2020?
Addressing these questions, the survey unearthed some common themes, providing a strong indication as to the technologies that could prove essential in 2020 and beyond.
- Smarter analytics: As everything in technology looks to become “smarter”, so too will analytics. Already under way in many leading technologies, there is a real drive for solutions to be infused with AI, ML and Natural Language querying, all of which will enable better decision-making
- Data wrangling: Organisations are increasingly becoming aware of the need to wrangle, tweak, or move data even at the final stages of finishing a project. Data wrangling is fast becoming an essential tool to keep projects on track and stay agile
- Collaboration: Teams are growing and widening to include non-experts that encourage and enable diversity of insight on projects. Without effective collaboration, this resource will not be fully harnessed
- Outcome focus: Vital to any successful AI or ML initiative, is the shift toward an outcome focus. Only by operationalising analytics, pushing it out into the field for use, managing it, and governing it, will organisations reap its rewards
Embracing innovation in analytics
These four topics were top of mind for the survey respondents.How can companies take advantage of this innovation in analytics?
- Choose the right use case: The use case is the cornerstone to your success. It has to be well defined, critical to your business, and have key stakeholders that will sponsor the project. Find something that hurts and fix it
- Align with stakeholders: All too often, stakeholders want something specific, but the project becomes siloed. It is essential to have a platform that allows you to be iterative and one that will allow the project to grow and change. Prepare to be iterative and act as a partner
- Ensure you have the right tools: We have entered into a new generation of BI and analytics. If you are not keeping pace with the innovation in the market, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Look to AI and ML, in-app data wrangling, and streaming. If you don’t have those capabilities inside your platform, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to do things differently
- Understand your data landscape: You will need a platform that can help you to understand your data landscape, one that can reach out to data and will allow you to send the analytics to the data, not always the data to the analytics
- Collaborate widely: Ensure you have the tools to collaborate widely, not only with your fellow technical teams, but also with the stakeholders and sponsors of projects. And of course, those even higher up – it’s good for them to have visibility into what you’re doing
The world of analytics never stands still, nor should it. With the pace of innovation accelerating, analytics is becoming even more critical for even more use cases. Don’t get left behind.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their use-cases? Attend the co-located IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, AI & Big Data Expo, Cyber Security & Cloud Expo and 5G Expo World Series with upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam and explore the future of enterprise technology.
