Analyst Perspectives

Did you catch all the big data analogies people used in 2012? There were many, like the refinement of oil analogy, or the spinning straw into gold analogy, and less useful but more entertaining ones, like big data is like a box of chocolates, or big data is like The Matrix (because “there’s no way Keanu Reeves learns Kung Fu in five seconds without using big data”).  I tend to like the water analogy, which I’ll use here to have a little fun and to briefly describe how I see the business analytics market in 2013.

2013 is about standing lakes of information that will turn into numerous tributaries. These various tributaries of profile, behavioral and attitudinal data will flow into the digital river of institutional knowledge. Analytics, built out by people, process, information and technology, will be the only banks high enough to control this vast river and funnel it through the duct of organizational culture and into an ocean of market advantage.

With this river of information as a backdrop, I’m excited to introduce the Ventana Research Business Analytics Research Agenda for 2013, focused on three themes:

Answering the W’s (the what, the so what, the now what and the then what)

The first and perhaps most important theme of the 2013 research agenda builds on answering the W’s – the what, the so what, the now what and the then what – which was also the topic of one of my most widely read blog posts last year. In that piece I suggested a substantive shift from the discussion the three V’s to the four W’s corresponds to the shift from a technologically-oriented discussion to a business-oriented one. Volume, variety and velocity are well-known parameters of big data that help facilitate the technology discussion, but when we look at analytics and how it can drive success for an organization, we need to move to the so what, now what and then what of analytical insights, organizational decision-making and closed-loop processes. Our big data research found some significant gaps in the business analytics spectrum for what is available in the organization today fueling a new generation of technology for consuming big data.

Outcome-driven approaches are a good way of framing issues, given that business analytics, and in particular big data analytics, are such broad topics, yet the use cases are so specific. Our big data analytics benchmark research for 2013 that we will start shortly will therefore look at specific benefits and supported business cases across industries and LOB in order to assess best practices for big data analytics. The research will investigate the opportunities and barriers that exist today  and explore what needs to happen for us to move from an early adopter market to an early majority market. The benchmark research will feed weighting algorithms into our Big Data Analytics Value Index, which will look at the analytics vendors that are tackling the formidable challenges of providing software to analyze large and multistructured datasets.

Disseminating insights within the organization is a big part of moving from insights to action, and business intelligence is still a primary vehicle for driving insight into the organization. While there is a lot to be said about mobile BI, collaborative BI, visual discovery and predictive analytics, core business intelligence systems remain at the heart of many organizations. Therefore we will continue our in-depth coverage of core business intelligence systems with our Business Intelligence Value Index, in the context of our next-generation business analytics benchmark research that will start in 2013.

Embracing next generation technology for business analytics

We’re beginning to see businesses embracing next-generation technology for business analytics.Collaborative business intelligence is a critical part of this conversation, both in terms of getting insights and in terms of making decisions. Last year’s next-generation business intelligence benchmark research showed us that the market is still undecided on how next-generation BI will be rolled out, with business applications being the preferred method, but only slightly more so than through business intelligence or office productivity tools. In addition to collaboration, we will focus on mobile and location trends in our next-generation business analytics benchmark research and our new location analytics benchmark research that we have already found has specific needs for business analysts. We see mobile business intelligence as a particularly hot area in 2013, and we are therefore breaking out mobile business intelligence vendors in this year’s Mobile Business Intelligence Value Index that we will conduct.

Another hot area of next-generation technology revolves around right-time data and real-time data and how they can be built into organizational workflows. As our operational intelligence benchmark research found, perceptions around OI and real-time data differ significantly between IT and business users. We will extend this discussion in the context of the big data analytics benchmark research, and specifically in the context of our Operational Intelligence Value Index that we will do in 2013.

Using analytical best practices across business and IT

Our final theme relates to the use of analytical best practices across business and IT. We’ll be looking at best practices for companies as they evolve to become analytics-driven organizations. In this context, we’ll look at exploratory analytics, visual discovery and even English representation of the analytics itself as approaches in our next-generation business analytics benchmark research and how these impact how we assess BI in our Business Intelligence Value Index. We’ll look at how organizations exploit predictive analytics on big data as a competitive advantage as found in our predictive analytics benchmark within the context of our big data analytics benchmark research. We’ll look at the hot areas of sales and customer analytics, including best practices and their intersection with cloud computing models. And we’ll look at previously untapped areas of analytics that are just now heating up, such as human capital analytics. In our human capital analytics benchmark research that will begin shortly we’ll look across the landscape to assess not just analytics associated with core HR, but analytics around talent management and workforce optimization as well.

I see a high level of innovation and change going on in the business analytics market in 2013. Whenever an industry undergoes such change, high-quality primary research acts as a lighthouse for both customers and suppliers.  Companies can capitalize on all of the exciting developments in analytics, business intelligence and related areas of innovation to drive competitive advantage, but only if they understand the changes and potential value.

I am looking forward providing a practical perspective on using all forms of business analytics as a value in organizations and helping our Ventana Research community and clients.

Come read and download the full research agenda.

Regards,

Tony Cosentino
VP and Research Director