Why analytics is the catalyst that turns data into intelligent decisions

Ever since the dawn of tech­nolo­gies like the hand-held cal­cu­la­tor, we have been empow­ered to make quick­er deci­sions with dig­i­tal data at scale. Tech­nol­o­gy has evolved dras­ti­cal­ly since then, of course: today, an over­whelm­ing amount of data per­me­ates every­thing we do and say.

Most recog­nise the trans­for­ma­tion­al pow­er of data in busi­ness, but even as ‘big data’ got big­ger and big­ger (and big­ger), many of the oppor­tu­ni­ties in it have remained rel­a­tive­ly untapped. Too lit­tle data; too much data; or the enor­mous amount of labo­ri­ous process­es and man­pow­er nec­es­sary to actu­al­ly empow­er peo­ple to use it – there have been road­blocks. What was miss­ing were a cou­ple of key ingre­di­ents: automa­tion and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.

But now automa­tion and AI are pow­er­ing the next evo­lu­tion in using data – deci­sion intel­li­gence. While once there was busi­ness intel­li­gence – a sta­t­ic sort of inter­pre­ta­tion, with lim­it­ed gen­er­a­tive capa­bil­i­ties – deci­sion intel­li­gence makes data-dri­ven deci­sions avail­able and use­ful to every­one, in all busi­ness units and at all lev­els.

And not a moment too soon, because despite the aware­ness of data’s trans­for­ma­tive pow­er, an enor­mous gulf exists between what deci­sion-mak­ers want and what they have.

Accord­ing to a recent IDC study, 83% of CEOs say they want­ed their organ­i­sa­tions to be more data dri­ven, and 87% of CXOs say that becom­ing an intel­li­gent enter­prise is a top pri­or­i­ty. But in prac­tice, only 30% of deci­sion mak­ers say that actions in their organ­i­sa­tions are dri­ven by data analy­sis. Only 33% are com­fort­able ques­tion­ing the KPIs and met­rics used in organ­i­sa­tions, in oth­er words, inter­ro­gat­ing the qual­i­ty of the data beneath the super­fi­cial lay­er of num­bers or sta­tis­tics.

How­ev­er, a sep­a­rate IDC study found that a third of C‑suite deci­sion mak­ers glob­al­ly are now enthu­si­as­tic about the poten­tial for deci­sion intel­li­gence, which is already help­ing busi­ness­es leap ahead from the lim­i­ta­tions found in tra­di­tion­al busi­ness intel­li­gence plat­forms, and no longer rel­e­gat­ed sole­ly to data sci­en­tists or sta­tis­ti­cians.

“If you’re basi­cal­ly query­ing against the data­base and prepar­ing visu­al­i­sa­tions based on what’s in it, that’s not dif­fer­ent from what we’ve been doing with BI (busi­ness intel­li­gence) for years,” says Chan­dana Gopal, research direc­tor for future intel­li­gence at IDC. “With deci­sion intel­li­gence, what’s dif­fer­ent is real­ly enabling organ­i­sa­tions to analyse data to gen­er­ate insights – to make those insights avail­able to every­body, and make it per­va­sive with­in the organ­i­sa­tion.”

For com­pa­nies like Mr Kipling man­u­fac­tur­er Pre­mier Foods, deci­sion intel­li­gence pow­ered by Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics is help­ing it con­nect data from all of its sources. For exam­ple, SAP Busi­ness Ware­house with Ama­zon Red­Shift is help­ing to pro­vide vis­i­bil­i­ty and insights across all busi­ness func­tions. Already, the plat­form is allow­ing the com­pa­ny to auto­mate insights into the recy­cla­bil­i­ty of the prod­ucts it gen­er­ates, shift­ing it away from labo­ri­ous man­u­al process­es and help­ing the busi­ness meet sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.

London’s Regent Street sta­ple Lib­er­ty, mean­while, is using deci­sion ana­lyt­ics to inform its omnichan­nel retail strat­e­gy – rolling out self-ser­vice, in-depth ana­lyt­ics across finance, buy­ing, mer­chan­dis­ing, web and shop floor, avail­able on any device, any­where – cre­at­ing mas­sive time sav­ings and allow­ing the busi­ness to bet­ter mea­sure and pre­pare for peak shop­ping hours. It’s becom­ing evi­dent that busi­ness­es equipped with this kind of action­able data are like­ly to inch ahead of com­pe­ti­tion due to the sheer speed and pow­er of auto­mat­ed insights; whether busi­ness­es are real­ly data dri­ven or not will ulti­mate­ly be a dif­fer­en­tia­tor in today’s hyper-com­pet­i­tive land­scape.

But the end results could be even more pro­found, says Omri Kohl, CEO of Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics, provider of a deci­sion intel­li­gence plat­form used by data sci­en­tists and non-tech­ni­cal line of busi­ness users alike, with organ­i­sa­tions one day trans­form­ing into “autonomous com­pa­nies” where bur­den­some man­u­al deci­sion-mak­ing is com­plete­ly tak­en over by AI.

This would mark a shift to an out­comes-based kind of ana­lyt­ics, which Kohl com­pares to TV. It’s rare for most view­ers to obsess over the tech­ni­cal ins and outs of how a show can be broad­cast, streamed, processed and viewed in real time: “The same should hap­pen with ana­lyt­ics – even­tu­al­ly, all I care about is the out­come. What can I do bet­ter, and how can I per­form smarter, bet­ter and faster in my organ­i­sa­tion? That’s what we’re try­ing to deliv­er in deci­sion intel­li­gence, pro­vid­ing you with the out­come.”

But how do you get to that point? Many busi­ness­es have, of course, invest­ed in ana­lyt­ics tech­nolo­gies for decades, adds IDC’s Gopal. To reach the next step, a holis­tic, joined-up approach is required.

“You have all the tech­nolo­gies you need, but do you have the abil­i­ty to access all the insights they need to make deci­sions on a day-to-day lev­el?” she asks. “Does your organ­i­sa­tion have the skills, the cul­ture, the under­stand­ing, the trust? All of these ele­ments must come into place to be able to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to real­ly guide deci­sions and actions after those deci­sions.”

The CEO has a crit­i­cal role to play in bring­ing about these changes. To cre­ate busi­ness­es with data as their beat­ing heart, CEOs will need to lead by exam­ple.

“If change starts from the bot­tom up and there’s no sup­port from man­age­ment, peo­ple will con­tin­ue to make deci­sions based on their gut instinct,” com­ments Kohl. “This works to a cer­tain degree – but not when the deci­sions are super com­plex.”

Even small changes at the lead­er­ship lev­el can cas­cade into wider organ­i­sa­tion­al shifts. When CEOs begin debat­ing the accu­ra­cy and qual­i­ty of data they are mak­ing deci­sions with, adds Kohl, sud­den­ly the con­ver­sa­tion is no longer quan­ti­ta­tive and forces the busi­ness to align on being data dri­ven.

At the same time, lead­er­ship must work to dis­solve the data silos that can nat­u­ral­ly form with­in organ­i­sa­tions.

Just as most busi­ness­es have a sin­gle CRM sys­tem, says Kohl, it makes lit­tle sense to have hun­dreds of often ad-hoc ana­lyt­ics ini­tia­tives all run­ning inde­pen­dent­ly. “In those cas­es, you can’t real­ly see a sin­gle ver­sion of truth across the organ­i­sa­tion,” he says. “It’s extreme­ly cost­ly to sup­port so many localised ini­tia­tives from dif­fer­ent groups, func­tions and even dif­fer­ent peo­ple.”

With that sin­gle source of truth estab­lished, busi­ness­es can be bet­ter served by one ana­lyt­ics plat­form with capa­bil­i­ties that cut across depart­ments and, cru­cial­ly, one that’s sim­ple enough to use that every employ­ee is encour­aged and able to actu­al­ly engage with it. This is where inter­nal ini­tia­tives around data lit­er­a­cy mat­ter: “It’s one thing to make a deci­sion to become data dri­ven,” says Kohl. “It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry now to sup­port every­body to start imple­ment­ing that cap­ture.

“Ana­lyt­ics isn’t one size fits all – my require­ments are dif­fer­ent to col­leagues in finance, to the con­troller, to the CFO, to the accoun­tant, to the book­keep­er. Each one of us has dif­fer­ent require­ments, dif­fer­ent needs, and this is where automa­tion and AI can influ­ence the way peo­ple actu­al­ly use ana­lyt­ics with­out pre­lim­i­nary knowl­edge.”

Armed with the data, tool­ing, under­stand­ing and resolve to make it hap­pen, this is the task of the data-dri­ven CEO – lever­ag­ing automa­tion and AI to empow­er every user, no mat­ter their func­tion.

To learn more about apply­ing aug­ment­ed ana­lyt­ics, deci­sion intel­li­gence and AI in your enter­prise, vis­it pyramidanalytics.com/decision-intelligence-platform

Pro­mot­ed by Pyra­mid Ana­lyt­ics