Business intelligence, analytics to continue as top investment priority: Gartner

However, only 30% potential users in an organisation adope CIO sponsored analytics tools

New York Stock Exchange-listed information technology research and advisory company, Gartner Inc, today said that business intelligence (BI) and analytics would continue to be a top investment priority for chief information officers (CIOs).

It, however, said its user surveys showed that only 30% of potential users in an organisation adopt CIO-sponsored analytics tools. This appears to be changing as organisations invest in making analytics ‘invisible’ and more consumable and accessible, to the non-traditional analytics user.
 
“A large enterprise makes millions of decisions every day. The challenge is that companies have far more data than people have time, and the amount of data that is generated every minute keeps increasing. In the face of accelerating business processes and a myriad of distractions, real-time operational intelligence systems are moving from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have for survival.’ The more pervasively analytics can be deployed to business users, customers and consumers, the greater the impact will be in real time on business activities, competitiveness, innovation and productivity,” Rita Sallam, research vice-president and analyst at Gartner, said in a release.

Gartner has identified three key trends for analytics and BI professionals to consider in 2013 and recommendations on how to tackle them. These include making analytics more invisible and transparent to users through easy natural language interfaces for exploring data and through embedded analytic applications at the point of decision or action.

“Also, The growing volume of real-time data and the reduced time for decision making are driving companies to implement real-time operational intelligence systems that make supervisors and operations staff more effective. Increasing competition, cost and regulatory pressures will also motivate business leaders to adopt more prescriptive analytics, making business decisions smarter and more repeatable and reducing personnel costs,” it said.

Gartner will be organising a two-day ‘Business Intelligence and Information Management Summit’ in Mumbai from June 10, 2013, where analysts will discuss consumerisation and the future of BI.