In the past few years, business analytics landscape has evolved immensely. Companies are no longer wondering how to harness the potential of their data. Instead, they are closely exploring data of all types, shapes, and sizes from all the possible disparate sources to get relevant business insights.
As we look ahead, the business analytics space shows no signs of slowing down and continues to witness the development of several new trends. Let’s take a look at the important ones that will define business analytics in 2017:
1. The Focus will Shift from Predictive to Prescriptive Analysis:
In the last few years, more and more industry segments have started tapping into predictive analytics to understand customer behavior, recognize opportunities and increase revenue share. For instance, e-Commerce companies today rely on predictive analytics to generate cross-sell opportunities and identify when to run a promotion or special discount day. Similarly, hotels predict expected number of guests on a day and adjust pricing accordingly.
While until now gaining predictive capabilities have been top of mind for organizations, scales will now start turning in the favor of prescriptive analytics. Essentially, prescriptive analytics offers insights into steps/decisions you need to take to achieve an intended goal. It helps you see how a particular decision will deliver in the future, empowering you to adjust that decision before it is actually made.
According to research firm Gartner, while currently, only 10% of organizations are using prescriptive analytics, by 2020 the number will grow to 35%. It forecasts the market to grow to $1.1 billion by 2019.
2. Analytics will Become Pervasive, Courtesy Embedded BI:
Increasingly businesses are realizing that best results from analytics can be derived when it is a natural part of the workflow. This is giving rise to the trend of embedded analytics, wherein an analytics tool is integrated into a business application instead of a separate platform. Embedded analytics makes features specific to an analytics platform available on a business app. Thus, you no longer need to install or learn a new tool or adapt to another interface and structure. In 2017, trend for embedded analytics will gain momentum with companies expecting analytics to enrich every business process.
3. Cloud Analytics Will Gain Prominence:
Companies of all sizes today are evaluating cloud analytics platforms as it gives them the ability to scale up and down as per the business requirement. In 2017, the trend is slated to gain more steam with cloud being used not only as an analytics delivery platform but also as a source of data.
Modern-day businesses are fast realizing the need to analyze data outside the existing data warehouse. Data from diverse web applications and cloud-based applications, such as Google Docs and Google Analytics need to be factored in to gain comprehensive insights. Given this, cloud-based and hybrid analytics tools (that incorporate legacy databases, yet allow organizations to take advantage of cloud) will continue to win the race.
4. Collaborative Analytics Come to the Fore:
With data becoming more accessible and sharing becoming easier thanks to the cloud, collaborative analytics will become the order of the day in 2017. Information sharing via PDFs will become a thing of the past. The new age of collaborative analytics will see professionals share live interactive workbooks to make business decisions. Collaborative analytics will help with functionalities like setting up intelligent alerts, sharing embedded dashboards and generating automated reports at a scheduled time to enhance the decision-making process. Leveraging collective intelligence of the organization to look at facts and insights provided by analytics will become the norm.
Clearly, interesting times are ahead for business analytics with all these trends further transforming the space and organizations continuing to invest in analytics. As per Gartner, analytics will remain the top focus for CIOs through 2017. With analytics continuing to be at the centre-stage, the demand for skilled data experts will intensify further in the coming years.
One of the key trends in business analytics is the rising importance of data visualization. Tools like Power BI are at the forefront of this trend. To stay ahead, consider taking a Power BI free course, where you can learn how to transform raw data into actionable insights using powerful visual techniques.
