"Data analytics!" Are you getting it right.....?

Remember the old cliché; "pictures speak a thousand words" Imagine for a moment you are traveling in a foreign land and can’t speak a word of the local language. I'm sure you'd agree that communicating with locals using words alone would be difficult right? So as a starting point you might try some very rudimentary sign language, coupled with the grunting out of a few English words here and there in a hope to establish some sort of dialogue, speaking from the experience of having tried this numerous times, the end result was normally a blank stares, or I end up at a bar instead of a coffee shop, which might not have been such a bad result on some of the days. But when I wised up a bit and started using pictures as a means to converse, the person regardless of age, sex, or nationality, would immediately understand and assist.

Where am I going with this analogy you might ask? I’m using it to introduce the concept of business intelligence and data analytics. Many companies do use digital business intelligence tools, some on a much larger scale than others and some might just be wetting their feet. The degree of success in the BI space does vary a great deal from one company to the next. Some might experience very high levels of success, while for other’s it is a frustrating, tedious, and inaccurate experience.

“For example: a recent survey of 105 executives by Gatepoint Research found that 75% of respondents said it takes more than a day to “wrangle” their data-sets to the point where they can visually analyse them; and, of those, 23% said it takes more than a week. Poor integration (61%) and lack of data expertise (59%) were among the reasons cited for impeding their ability to make full use of data. A majority, 57%, rated their sophistication with data discovery and analytics as average or below. Seventy-nine percent still rely on spreadsheets!!”

The stock pile of data just one multinational company has stored in servers and databases scattered randomly throughout the organisation and in the cloud. If stacked as paper, could build a tower to the moon and back. So considering this, is it not critical to approach the concept of data analytics, data warehousing, data mining and big data concepts in a very structured and specific way?

The accuracy of your reports and dashboards is always traced back to the quality of the data being imported into the analytics engine. It is also critical that it be easy for non-technology oriented staff to create, and understand the report. The information must present easily in a format which is simple to understand. This is where the picture or graphical element comes in. The more visual the report the easier the report is to understand, digest, and use.

This business information is valuable and a core asset to companies. Corporate data has a story to tell about every company transaction ever! It is your companies DNA! So baring this in mind how can all of this information be used to streamline and future proof your business?

The secret lies in the integration and ability to gather data in a way that the end result is a visual report that the eye and mind can comprehend easily and enjoyably. But more importantly than anything else, it must be accurate and simple to create. So simple in fact that even an entry level employee could use it to create reports critical to their personal and business units ongoing success.

This new era has given birth to a vast many amazing tools and technologies and the latest buzz is Big Data. But again I want to reemphasize that regardless of the tools used or the names given to these tools. It still remains a fact that all of this sophisticated technology is very ineffective unless implemented, integrated, and maintained using resources that have done this successfully before,

Business Intelligence is a fundamental requirement for any successful business especially in today’s competitive ever changing business environment. Please, and I say this at the top of my lungs! Make sure you are partnering with service providers who know what they are doing and have the track record to prove their capabilities.

“There is nothing more important to a company's success and long-term sustainability than the effective use of its data”

Brett Kinsey