Ever since Business Intelligence emerged as a technical and commercial practice, the promise has been that the right information, delivered at the right time, in the right format would help us, as users, to make better decisions.
Earlier this year, I attended the Pacific Northwest BI & Analytics Summit. It’s a relatively small industry event that brings together some thought leaders, industry analysts and representatives from major vendors who are all intensely passionate about the BI space. Some of the people who were there include Donald Farmer, Doc Searls, Jill Dyche, Claudia Imhoff, Mike Ferguson and Shaun Rodgers.
When I attended the Pacific Northwest BI & Analytics Summit this summer, we had a great discussion about data interpretation and the way organizations consume data. One of the things that came up was how the industry has been so focused on using dashboards as the delivery mechanism for analytics that we’ve lost the art of long-form analysis.
I’ve read and heard a lot about how organizations need ‘data interpreters’ lately. For me, this raises the question of what do analytics departments do today?
The Yellowfin team spent their Wednesday at the She Loves Data event in Melbourne. It was brilliant. If you’re not familiar, She Loves Data (previously called Data Girls) is a data analytics initiative, that focuses on teaching and encouraging women to learn about data, technology, and analytics. They hold regular workshops for women in 6 different APAC cities to build a community for them to come together to learn, connect with each other, and have fun.
We’re in the early stages of a dramatic transition for the analytics industry. More and more of the jobs that were previously done by analysts are being automated. Technology is changing the way organizations receive information. People are being alerted to both good and bad news as it happens and this has profound behavioral consequences for organizations.
For over 30 years, the dashboard has been the delivery paradigm of choice for decision support and executive information systems. It started with Business Objects and Cognos, and today Qlik, Tableau, Power BI and other vendors are still using dashboards as the medium of data delivery. Rather than thinking about whether there’s a better way to deliver insights, dashboard dinosaurs just keep using the same paradigm.
When we look at automation in the BI industry and how vendors are tackling augmented analysis, or automated analytics, there are three distinct phases of maturity.
To me, the best leaders are those that provide transparency in their decision-making process. Every CEO has to make tough calls, but I believe that good leaders influence decisions rather than dictate outcomes. After all, no one likes being told what to do.
One of the best things about my job is that I get to continually scan the industry and learn about who’s driving innovation (see my predictions for 2018 here). As a result, I see five key trends emerging in the analytics space over the next year.
