Gartner: analytics will be more transparent, real-time and automated

Analyst company Gartner has identified three trends for analytics and business intelligence (BI) professionals to consider.

Analytics must be made “more invisible and transparent, through easy natural language interfaces for exploring data and through embedded analytic applications”.

Operations staff will increasingly need real time operational BI systems to be effective. And business leaders will go for more “prescriptive analytics, making business decisions smarter and more repeatable and reducing personnel costs,” said Gartner.

Gartner research vice-president analyst Rita Sallam said: “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”.

Gartner explained that in hot demand will be “analytic systems that correlate and relate structured and unstructured data, and reason, learn and deliver prescriptive advice”.

It advised BI professionals: “Begin by identifying targeted data exploration and high-value decision-making opportunities where making analytics invisible, transparent, context-aware and accessible in real time to specific constituencies can add demonstrable value.”

Organisations should “offload event data capture, filtering, mathematical calculations and pattern detection to real-time operational intelligence software, to provide better situation awareness to business people,” said Gartner.

Gartner said there is increased movement among managers to adopt and use more widely decision management software that automates decision-making. 

“Architects should work with business analysts, subject matter experts and business managers to develop an understanding of the kinds of business decisions that will be made and let computers make decisions that are structured and repeatable to conserve people's time and attention for the thinking and actions that computers cannot do,” said Gartner.