Top Five Analytics Trends for 2016

Analytics have become “big” and “intelligent” over the years, but companies still struggle to squeeze the full value of their data analytics to meaningfully direct their go-forward strategies. While we see this trend continuing into 2016, there are some bright spots as technological advances enable companies to wade their way through the murky data lakes toward clearer waters.

Here is what Capto sees on the analytics horizon for 2016:

 

1.     Companies Will Invest A Lot Of Time And Money Without Proper Financial Returns.

The herd mentality will remain squarely in place in 2016 because when the latest technologies are “in” companies will invest big. But they will do so in traditional ways, ultimately missing the boat. However, the thought leaders will innovate in new ways to justify the expense and exploit the value of the insights across business disciplines to create a larger return.

2.     More Companies Will Get Into The Big Data “Service Bureau” Business.

Big data is today’s version of the cloud. Because there is a tremendous business opportunity, there will be a lot of investment in this space. Companies such as IBM need to learn how to deliver, value and sell this new business segment. The economic models simply haven’t matured yet. That said, we predict IBM’s Watson and others will be delivering true “insights as a service” in the next few years.

3.     Multiple Positions Will Be Vying To Lead Big Data Initiatives.

With so many elements of business gaining tremendous value from big data—e.g., marketing, supply chain and customer service—internal competition to own or develop separate analytics capabilities will increase – leading to multiple sources of the “truth.”

4.     Easier Technical Tools Will Help Business Units Circumvent IT, Yet Again.

With easier, cloud-based tools, businesses can access and analyze data themselves and simply remove IT—which is frequently viewed as the roadblock—from the equation.  Until IT figures out how to clearly define its value proposition and more nimbly serve its internal business customers, there will continue to be ongoing frustration with the “IT bottleneck” and other business units will look for ways around it.

5.     Getting To The Truth Vs. Debating The Facts.

With different perspectives and needs, there will be confusion on how to obtain and begin to use the same set of facts. Worse still, the arguments will likely center on which data set is the right one to use instead of how we could use the data we have to move forward. Without like-minded direction on the data strategy, companies will get stuck and not be able to capitalize on the insights due to multiple sources of “truth.”

While there will be major investment, forward movement will be challenging. The companies that move faster will be those that collaborate, avoid silos and approach the insights gained from data as a foundational element to their 2016 strategy.