Digital Transformation: BI to AI Driven Big Data Analytics

Augmented analytics are taking momentum and accelerating enterprise digital transformation initiatives. Recent advancements in #AI, #ML, #NLP and #IoT led analytics provide more real-time data insights generated by devices, sensors and people to make faster decisions. This is one of the driving factor for enterprise shift from traditional business intelligence (BI) to Artificial intelligence (AI) led Big Data Analytics for their Predictive, Prescriptive & Automated analytics needs.

What is Augmented Analytics?

As per wikipedia, Augmented Analytics is an approach of data analytics that employs the use of machine learning and natural language processing to automate analysis processes normally done by a specialist or data scientist. The term was introduced in 2017 by Rita Sallam, Cindi Howson, and Carlie Idoine in a Gartner research paper.

Current Market Trend

Recently, #Microsoft announced the public preview of its smart narratives feature for #PowerBI. Also #ThoughtSpot, which focuses on AI-driven analytics, announced its cloud/SaaS offering, ThoughtSpot Cloud. Earlier #businessinteligence leader #Qlik also announced major AI advancement to Qlik Sense, including expansion of its Insight Advisor feature.

All these announcement by leaders those who derive Business Intelligence (BI), Business Analytics for Big Data shows how important is augmented analytics.

How SaaS Industry is leveraging the BI shift

SaaS industry is also stepping up to leverage the benefits of augmented analytics. For example recently this month Salesforce Einstein Analytics team have announced the joint venture with Tableau organization. The first focus of the Einstein Analytics integration is to embed Einstein Discovery into Tableau.

Einstein Discovery uses an array of AI, ML and IoT technologies to find patterns in data, articulate those observations in plain English and provide predictions and recommendations based on that. Its win win situation for both the parties as Tableau with their deep expertise in conventional analytics and visualization capabilities will gain embedded AI driven analytics experience. In terns saleforce will able to help their customer to better analyze and understand the data which are critical for CRM applications.

AI is transforming the business intelligence

Augmented analytics is making BI more smarter by providing advanced AI & ML driven features with better business insights then ever before. It not only providing the visualization of complex and high volume of dat but also going one step ahead to improve customer experience with below advanced analytics.

• Descriptive analytics
• Predictive analytics
• Prescriptive analytics
• Automated analytics

These analytics are very crucial in current business landscape. Many small to large enterprises are leveraging this technology to improve the efficiency of business processes and data driven decision-making. And this trend is going to increase day by day with the digital transformation. If you see the below trend (survey conducted by leading digital innovation organization) we are moving from towards Predictive analytics and Prescriptive analytics from traditional descriptive analytics. The future lies in Prescriptive and Automated analytics but still there is more to do.

BI Shift From Reactive To Proactive Analytics

The new big data sources, including smartphones, tablets and Internet of Things (IoT) devices has opened a new door for deep analytics. Now business are no longer want to be only dependent on huge chunks of static reports generated by traditional BI software systems. And at the same time it is very difficult to keep manually analyze multiple reports generated from different data sources. This is where automated analytics helps.

Business Intelligence and Business Analytics represent a global market that today, according to Gartner’s analysis, is close to 19 billion dollars and is expected to reach 23 billion dollars in near future.

The way data is growing day by day the scope of BI and business analytics will also continue. And AI driven approach will help to take best of the it. Business Intelligence and Business Analytics represent a global market that today, according to Gartner’s analysis, is close to 19 billion dollars and is expected to reach 23 billion dollars in near future.

Conclusion

Today, businesses are entering into a new era which is ruled by data. AI and ML based solutions are gradually evolving and are key drivers for day-to-day business processes and Business Intelligence decision-making. This is a big digital transformation which is currently seen in large enterprises such as amazon etc. and other mid or small enterprise is following the same. Although the future remains hazy but AI-based BI tools will keep them competitive in the changing digital transformation landscape.

What are your opinions? How you see the future of BI trend? how was your experience using AI led BI tools? Do share your thought in the comments.

PS: Opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my current or previous employer.