As 2017 approaches, today’s businesses have the unprecedented ability to enhance productivity and profitability through smarter, data-driven decision-making processes. This is made possible by modern business intelligence (BI) solutions, which empower organizations to more effectively collect, compile and analyze data, so as to more quickly arrive at better-informed decisions.
Modern cloud-based computing platforms enable comprehensive reporting, analytical processing, data mining, process mining, business performance management, and other key activities that were previously far more difficult to accomplish. In addition, cloud computing solutions enable businesses to shift resources toward a more service-oriented approach, which makes it easier and cheaper to manage BI efforts, without the need to spend excessively on hardware and expertise.
Thus, BI has become more than just a buzzword or trend. Rather, it’s now a necessity for businesses of all types and sizes. Some 97% of marketers say that over time, they’re increasingly able to use data effectively, according to a recent Ascend2 study.
The rising volume, velocity and variety of data has likewise given rise to a more dynamic business environment for those who can harness the benefits.
How Analytics Change the Game
As organizations adopt BI solutions, however, drastic changes in the workplace and workflow are often necessary. In order to become data-driven organizations, companies need to implement changes to their cultures, policies, processes and division of labor.
When your company becomes a data-driven business, you’ll find it easier to make sound decisions, more quickly, based on all of the information gathered and analyzed.
Beyond making smart management decisions, here are some additional fundamental benefits
associated with adopting BI:
Business-Led Analytics Operations
Because queries used to involve hours of preparing data sets and formulating code, business intelligence was once strictly the realm of the IT department. Deriving meaningful, actionable insights from the information at hand used to involve several rounds of exploratory processes whereby senior executives would collaborate with data warehouse managers and analysts.
As enterprises increasingly utilize modern BI solutions, they will also become more readily available in sharing data with customers, partners and internal users. In other words, with our data democratized, today’s workforce is significantly empowered. A recent survey by BI software provider Sisense found that today’s businesspeople prefer to keep close tabs on their KPIs, with some 45% of respondents checking performance on a daily basis and 17% doing so hourly.
Indeed, the newer generation of BI tools have made analytics simpler, faster and more accessible. Here are some examples of innovative features that make these solutions significantly more accessible and useful for businesses today.
Automated data pre-processing. As BI solutions become smarter, they’re able to determine the relationships between various fields and figures in your data sets, no matter where the data is stored and in what format. By preparing data for analysis as soon as it’s synced, analytics software is able to perform complex functions, execute queries and find relevant correlations and insights extremely quickly, whenever you need it to. Google’s Analytics 360 Suite, for example, uses the company’s formidable machine learning capabilities to help marketers identify lucrative audience segments.
Smart caching. Another feature that mitigates processing bottlenecks, smart caching intelligently caches data into the data processing stack-again, now focused on in-memory and in-chip processing-to reduce I/O calls, which in turn enhances performance.
Drag-and-drop interface. With BI now becoming a business-led activity, users need the ability to easily manipulate information, which includes importing and merging of data sets from any number of sources, source types and formats (both structured and unstructured).
Beautiful visualizations. For business-oriented end-users, visualization provides a way to communicate analysis of large data sets into something more meaning than say rows and columns of numbers. Easily digestible charts and interactive dashboards can provide fast and accurate answers to decision points.
Embeddable anywhere. In addition to being to being more visually oriented, modern BI solutions enable users to embed the results into other platforms through APIs, dashboards and widgets. This means business users can go beyond the confines of their BI tools and access points.
Takeaways and Conclusions
There is no question that BI is already playing an instrumental role for enterprises today. It will enhance the decision-making process and improve the workflow across a business’ disparate departments.
Investing in a future-proof BI stack makes sense in ensuring your business is ready for an increasingly data-driven world where the right knowledge and information can mean success or failure for your organization.
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