In today’s rapidly changing business world, it is critical for business leaders to have the right insight and data to make the right calls at the right time. Finding the right blend of what, why and how to use this enormous amount of data is something that needs attention in present day competitive business environment.
Business strategies and operational decisions are being undertaken based on the analysis provided by past operational data. Hence it is tremendously important for global business entities to equip themselves with the emerging technologies like business analytics software for better decision making and forecasting.
The management science which is a combination of predictive modelling and decision-making, can be termed as Business Analytics.
As per Gartner research, the below are the major highlights with regards to Business Intelligence (Analytics tools)
Analytics usually involves finding out past historical data points to analyze potential trends for future use. It will also help in investigating the past results or events, or to gauge the performance of a given business scenario or context.
The following are the key aspects for the demand for business intelligence tools.
The goal of analytics is to improve the business by gaining knowledge, which can be used to make improvements or changes.
War is ninety percent information.
Napoleon, Military leader
In the last two decades, Microsoft Excel has been the ideal platform to perform dash boarding, analysis and getting insightful data. Excel is the format of choice for CXO’s, Entrepreneurs, Academicians, financial analysts, to marketing and sales executives, as they are easy to share and modify.
However, as the data started to increase and as the requirements to analyze complex information started to grow, companies have slowly moved to Business intelligence tools.
As per the latest survey report from Gartner, SAP, SAS, IBM, Microstrategy and Oracle are some of the leading names, which are providing BI software
Most of the companies wish to deploy business intelligence software or analytics tools as a technology initiative.
Secondly, information from devices such as mobiles, machines, cloud and social / collaboration is creating tons of information. The amount of data is doubling year after year.
The use of business analytics is growing rapidly across several industries like Information technology, e-Commerce, Healthcare, Law enforcement, Biotechnology and Human resource management.
Companies, which are data centric like banking, insurance and capital markets produce loads of information. For them, it becomes an absolutely essential for implementing the right analytics solutions for their growth and sustainability.
In the final analysis, this quote by the late management guru, Peter Drucker, represents why most firms invest in analytics. If you are not measuring your digital initiatives, how can you manage or optimize them? And you would be right to note that just because you measure something does not guarantee that you will actually manage it; however, measurement is the starting point.
Clearly, the life cycle of data is far richer than just analyzing information. The convergence of several social, technological, and behavioral trends are defining new ways to interact with data and people. Will you and your business be ready?