Decision intelligence allows businesses to answer: what’s next?

The wide embrace of cloud-based tech­nolo­gies has fuelled explo­sive data growth over the last decade. This trend is ampli­fied by a hyper accel­er­a­tion of remote-friend­ly, dig­i­tal work­flows through the pan­dem­ic, which has cre­at­ed even more data to access, inte­grate, man­age and make sense of.

Data has the pow­er to unleash bet­ter busi­ness per­for­mance and dri­ve com­pet­i­tive advan­tage by aug­ment­ing deci­sion-mak­ing. But absent the abil­i­ty to access and deliv­er data to peo­ple and appli­ca­tions that require it, organ­i­sa­tions risk mut­ing their chances of thriv­ing in the dig­i­tal age.

The high stakes have pit­ted com­pa­nies against each oth­er in a race to build ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties to exploit the abun­dance of data. A recent sur­vey by New­Van­tage Part­ners revealed that 92% of For­tune 1000 organ­i­sa­tions report­ed increas­ing their invest­ments in data ini­tia­tives.

Yet despite these invest­ments, busi­ness­es are still strug­gling to become data dri­ven. Only 27% have achieved this goal and just one in five has estab­lished a data cul­ture, accord­ing to New Van­tage Part­ners’ research. Rather than sim­pli­fy­ing deci­sion-mak­ing and empow­er­ing all employ­ees with pow­er­ful insights, all too often com­pa­nies find them­selves with more com­plex­i­ty.

Despite BI tools claim­ing to be ‘self ser­vice’, busi­ness lead­ers fre­quent­ly need sup­port from data sci­en­tists and ana­lysts, result­ing in a drag on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and adop­tion rates of just 20%.

“Ana­lyt­ics tools are made for tech­ni­cal users, not man­agers or even execs,” says Omri Kohl, co-founder and CEO at Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics. “Com­pa­nies also strug­gle with con­sis­tent KPI report­ing across func­tions because they use dif­fer­ent ana­lyt­ics tools, and meet­ings designed to make data-dri­ven deci­sions just descend into con­ver­sa­tions about incon­sis­tent, inac­cu­rate data.

“After review­ing the dash­board, busi­ness lead­ers strug­gle to answer: What now? The result­ing lack of adop­tion by non-tech­ni­cal peo­ple has a com­pet­i­tive and finan­cial cost. They don’t need a dash­board – they need insights to answer their ques­tions, make deci­sions and take vital action.”

Nine out of 10 respon­dents in a recent 451 Research study said data will be more impor­tant to their organ­i­sa­tion in 2022, and many experts see deci­sion intel­li­gence as the next evo­lu­tion in ana­lyt­ics and busi­ness intel­li­gence (BI). The approach turns major data chal­lenges into myths.

All data no longer has to be in one place to analyse and get answers. This unachiev­able goal of tra­di­tion­al BI solu­tions not only slows every­thing down, but results in less than a fifth of avail­able data being used for deci­sion-mak­ing. Mean­while, com­pa­nies needn’t expect slow response time when analysing large data sets, nor have to risk repli­cat­ing data to use in their ana­lyt­ics tools.

The solu­tion to all three clas­sic data prob­lems is for BI and ana­lyt­ics lead­ers to deliv­er direct access to data sources, both inter­nal and exter­nal. Rather than requir­ing data to be ingest­ed into ana­lyt­ics tools, deci­sion intel­li­gence enables employ­ees to instant­ly con­nect to any data source direct­ly and query and blend data at scale, with data gov­er­nance and secu­ri­ty built in. 

Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics is lead­ing the charge to deci­sion intel­li­gence with its ‘one stop shop’ for any ana­lyt­i­cal needs. With a pow­er­ful direct query engine at its core, the Pyra­mid Deci­sion Intel­li­gence Plat­form unique­ly com­bines data prep, busi­ness ana­lyt­ics and data sci­ence to deliv­er a uni­fied deci­sion-mak­ing expe­ri­ence for every­one in the busi­ness. Cru­cial­ly, the pur­pose-built platform’s intu­itive, con­sis­tent brows­er expe­ri­ence allows busi­ness users to be self-suf­fi­cient while pro­vid­ing the pro­tec­tion of gov­er­nance for secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance.

One organ­i­sa­tion that has already ben­e­fit­ed from a more stream­lined, uni­fied and inclu­sive deci­sion-mak­ing expe­ri­ence is CRU, a glob­al com­mod­i­ty mar­ket analy­sis com­pa­ny. Pre­vi­ous­ly suf­fer­ing from insis­tent KPI report­ing across its sales and finance func­tions, the Pyra­mid Deci­sion Intel­li­gence Plat­form has helped CRU align on KPIs and get more val­ue from its data.

“Our teams spent more time talk­ing about whether or not they trust the data than analysing the data and mak­ing deci­sions,” says Will Blake, direc­tor of tech­nol­o­gy and ana­lyt­ics at CRU. “With Pyramid’s plat­form, we now focus on mak­ing deci­sions and uncov­er­ing rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it pyramidanalytics.com/decision-intelligence-platform

Pro­mot­ed by Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics