Virtually all organizations understand that their data contains valuable insights. The question is how to get at those insights faster. Especially from data whose shelf life might be only weeks, days, hours, or even minutes.
So, what are businesses doing to accelerate time to value insight? Industry analyst TDWI finds that they’re employing new technologies and practices to realize business value from data and analytics sooner.
Tracking Down Answers
In March 2017, TDWI sent an invitation via email to the BI and data professionals in its database, asking them to complete an Internet-based survey for its Q2 2017 Best Practices Report. The survey collected responses from 230 respondents. It excluded those who identified themselves as academics or vendor employees.
In addition to the survey, TDWI conducted telephone interviews with technical users, business sponsors, and data management experts. The firm also received briefings from vendors that offer products related to the scope of the report.
Survey demographics
Survey respondents include business and IT executives, developers and architects, data scientists and analysts, as well as users. The survey also covers a range of industries, although financial services and consulting dominate.
Patience Can Be the Enemy of Insight
The TDWI report points out that when it comes to analytics, business stakeholders are losing patience with delays in the development of applications that provide reports, analysis, and access to diverse data sources. Why? Because decisions based on stale data are often bad decisions. Or, at least, not the best decisions.
Sometimes it’s simply the data supply chain that’s at fault. Business analysts either can’t find the data they need or it takes too long. Or they have to navigate a complex web of security and permissions. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Higher Expectations
The big data and BI markets have evolved to the point where executives expect greater and faster ROI. When a POC analytics project goes into production, ROI can’t be years and millions of dollars down the road. No one wants to be the next IBM Watson-MD Anderson headline.
That’s why this TDWI Best Practices Report is so valuable. It focuses on current experiences with realizing value from BI and analytics and how organizations can accelerate that realization.
Here are just a few highlights:
- Poor project definition and scoping are often why organizations do not realize anticipated value from BI and analytics and why ROI falls short.
- Self-service BI, visual analytics, and data preparation are important trends, in part because organizations do not have enough skilled personnel to develop applications.
- Self-service experiences must be managed and well-governed to avoid data chaos and missteps that could make it harder to achieve value sooner.
- Insufficient data quality, consistency, and completeness, as well as poor knowledge about the data’s lineage, can slow down the realization of value.
You can download a free copy of the entire report here.
