Business Analytics: Move it to the Board Room

Believe it or not, what was once a tactical tool has now become a war-room weapon for many enterprises. Let’s understand the deepened impact of business analytics.

How about a review of the numbers before I begin?

Look at what is happening in the Big Data and Business Analytics (BDA) solutions market. Its worldwide revenues were expected to touch $189.1 billion in 2019, registering a jump of 12% over 2018. As per IDC, BDA revenues may maintain this pace of growth throughout the 2018-2022 forecast. By 2022, IDC expects worldwide BDA revenue will be $274.3 billion.

If you look at the overall Business intelligence market, it too is on track to hit $26.88 Billion by 2021 and $103.65 billion by 2025. At the last count, it reached $67.92 billion in 2019.

The question you should ask now is not ‘why’ but ‘what for’. A glance at the surge in enterprise-grade big data adoption (from 17% in 2015 to 59% in 2018) underlines the question even further.

These investments are not being made from an IT perspective but a business perspective. Yes, if you take a closer look, business analytics is no longer a nice-to-have practice. It has become a core strategic advantage, a competitive differentiator, and a necessity for transformation.

Better Data – Better Business

Digital transformation is the key driver of BDA spending. IDC has reported Executive-level initiatives that have resulted in demands for better, faster, and more comprehensive access to data and related analytics. It turns out; enterprises are not buying BDA as an after-thought but as a transformation tool for their digital relevance and survival.

Many organizations are busy rearchitecting their core models, and BDA solutions are at the heart of many of these investments. IT services dominated the BDA market in 2019 as the biggest category ($77.5 billion), business services were at $20.7 billion.

Do note how end-user queries, reporting, and analysis tools, relational data warehouse management tools, non-relational analytic data stores, and cognitive/AI software platforms are witnessing increased adoption. Their use in helping business leaders and executives with sharper insights and real-time information for smarter business decisions is now beyond doubt.

This is not happening as a knee-jerk reaction or as a random investment. Enterprises have realized the enduring value that analytics brings to the boardroom.

In the current age of digital-survival, business success rests on the depth and precision of customer experiences. Delivering these experiences is a complex task that rests on the availability to create clean, well-mapped, and actionable data.

And here is where business analytics can play a critical role in every stage of your business. From identifying the target market to defining business goals, increasing business revenue to making efficient decisions, and managing your business better, analytics can shift your enterprise’s competitive advantage.

This is why Orasi is passionate about helping organizations with industry-specific solutions. I know, analytics is much more than software or a black box. It’s about people, process and technology and using these assets in combination to transform how you view your customers, your business and the analytics culture of your organization. Business Analytics, when done with the right expertise and planning, can not only ensure your survival in the digital age but help you prosper by allowing you to think strategically about your customer’s behavior with well thought out and targeted messaging that resonates at an individual level. Implementing the right tools, processes and trained professionals ensures that organizations from any industry and any size can get the actionable insights needed to compete in today’s economy. These are the exact insights that businesses need to make better decisions. These decisions lead to more customers, consistent revenues, better agility to respond, longer customer journeys, deeper customer affinity, and an inimitable competitive edge.

As Boston Consulting Group reminds: businesses that adopt the path of data-driven marketing and attribution grow their customer base, gaining competitive advantage and increasing their ROI. That explains the 20% increase in revenue and a 30% uptick in cost savings. Is your enterprise on its way to accomplishing these types of results?

Every industry is adopting business analytics

The top three industries for BDA adoption are professional services, personal and consumer services, and media. IDC has observed that these are disruptive in nature and enriched with high levels of digitization potential. At the same time, smaller, innovative firms are now appreciating and leveraging access to technologies that were either out of reach or too complex earlier.

Banking, discrete manufacturing, professional services, process manufacturing, and federal/central government – these are the industries that are making strong BDA investments. Together, they make up $91.4 billion of worldwide BDA revenues. Going forward, the fastest BDA growth will come in securities and investment services (15.3% CAGR) and retail (15.2% CAGR).

So, the effectiveness of analytics is trickling into every vertical, every segment. One way or the other, directly or indirectly, your business is already witnessing the cascading effects of business analytics. So it is better to have a well-designed approach and reap the rewards of this new business phenomenon. As I said, it is not a technology wave anymore but a business pillar now. It could be your biggest turning-point. I hope you are ready.