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Analytics and BI Strategies Primer for 2018

Published: 26 January 2018 ID: G00344017

Analyst(s): Gareth Herschel, Joao Tapadinhas, Carlton E. Sapp

Making analytics the heart of a business strategy requires understanding the

benefits and risks of different types of analysis. This initiative will help data
and analytics leaders to identify analytic best practices and the vendors that
will deliver maximum business impact.

Scope
The analytics and BI strategies initiative focuses on the strategies, practices, technologies and
products needed to support a variety of users across different types of business problems.

It covers:

■ Aligning analytics investments with strategic business objectives to create transformational

insights
■ Using analysis to manage an increasingly diverse set of data such as streaming and
unstructured data by taking advantage of concepts such as augmented analytics, artificial
intelligence (AI) and machine learning
■ Facilitating the use of centralized and decentralized analytics in both human and automated
decision-making environments
■ Evaluating and assigning new roles and helping develop new skills to create new classes of
analytics users who have both domain knowledge and next-generation data analysis skills
■ Evaluating analytics technology trends and new products and services

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Analysis
Figure 1. Analytics and BI Strategies Overview

AI = artificial intelligence

Source: Gartner (January 2018)

Business complexity continues to grow, with new business models, channels, competitors and
customer requirements driving expectations for performance. All of these areas require excellence
and innovation in both planning and execution across all business functions. This complexity is
visible not only in the range of use cases that demand analytic insight, but also in the speed and
relevance of the way that analytics teams must deliver those insights. Analytics teams that fail to
deliver both analytic sophistication and ubiquitous insights will increasingly be displaced by
"shadow BI" teams across the organization, which may deliver inferior insights at a higher cost but
at least meet the tactical needs of individual business units. Analytics teams that do not embrace a
new strategic role for data and analytics across and beyond the organization risk being limited to
the role of tactical enablers of traditional analysis, such as reporting.

To meet the emerging needs of the organization, analytics teams must master a variety of new
concepts such as continuous intelligence and deep learning, while driving the coordinated adoption
of analysis throughout every business function and process with concepts such as the citizen data

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scientist and augmented analytics. By working across multiple organizational silos, the analytics
team is well placed to deliver insights on key business priorities such as the customer experience,
and to deliver the insights necessary for a digital business strategy.

Top Challenges and How Gartner Can Help

Analysis supports only a small fraction of the decisions that organizations make, but the increasing
sophistication of analytic technologies and the growing demands of business make this situation
both undesirable and unnecessary.

Gartner research will describe the most effective strategies using analytics to drive improved
performance, and provide independent assessments of the key products and technology providers
across multiple categories of analytic technology.

How do we get analysis and insight to everyone who needs it?

The complexity of modern organizations means the days of instinctive decision making
unsupported by data are over. Analytics must become ubiquitous so that every employee has
access to the insights they need to make effective decisions. However, meeting the organization's
growing demand for analysis requires turning users who may not have the desire, time or skills into
self-sufficient, analytics-savvy employees.

Fortunately, improvements in technologies such as data visualization, augmented analytics, natural-

language query and natural-language generation are enabling these new categories of users to take
advantage of analysis, both within the enterprise and via external stakeholders such as customers
and business partners. This process of technology enablement is not simple. It requires careful
matching of the analysis to the user and business problem for successful results.

Planned Research

■ Explain the impact and maturity of emerging technologies such as augmented analytics and
natural-language interfaces.
■ Best practices in developing the soft skills to ensure analytics is used to its full potential in
nontraditional use cases such as collaborative decision making.
■ Market coverage that describes key providers in a variety of different analytic software and
service markets.

How do we support a more complex business environment with more sophisticated

analysis?
Improvements in the availability of data and analytic processing power have opened up new topics
and enabled new approaches to analysis. The ability to use deep content analysis to understand
multidimensional, often unstructured data such as audio, photographs or video will transform a
number of industries. There is also the opportunity to apply higher levels of sophistication to more
traditional analysis such as optimization for supply chains or marketing budgets, or to apply

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machine learning to create more accurate predictions around behaviors such as credit risk, fraud
detection or network security intrusion.

This sophisticated analysis is worthless without the ability to deploy it. There are two constraints on
successful deployment:

■ How to turn models that work well in a data science lab into things that can actually be
deployed to solve business problems.
■ How to ensure that analysis and the resulting decisions are automated rather than being limited
by the need for a human in the loop.

Planned Research

■ Describe the impact of emerging technologies such as deep content analysis.

■ How to establish a sourcing strategy for analytic expertise that combines the recruitment of
data scientists, the development of citizen data scientists, and selecting which service providers
will make the right partners.
■ Sharing best practices for the deployment of data science models in both batch and real-time
contexts.

How do we create insights that will enable business transformation?

Traditionally, analytics has been designed and performed in response to the business strategy (such
as assessing fraud risk or measuring performance). However, analysis can also serve as a driver and
enabler of the business strategy. Creating insights that span organizational silos or even company
boundaries allows organizations to redefine their role in a customer's value chain (such as using a
combination of social media and purchase histories to identify complementary products that could
be combined into a bundled product offering).

Using analysis to challenge the status quo is difficult. It requires organizations to change their
operational speed, turning streaming data feeds into continuous intelligence, understanding the
total customer experience as one continuous process instead of a series of disconnected
interactions, and correctly identifying the key drivers for business performance rather than following
old metrics because the data was there.

Ensuring that analysis is delivered in a compelling, relevant, timely way to decision makers who are
driving the new enterprise vision for the organization is the most important new opportunity for
analytics teams to prove their value at heart of the enterprise, not just its periphery.

Planned Research

■ What best practices will ensure continuous intelligence from new data types such as streaming
data from Internet of Things sensors?

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■ How can organizations ensure a consistent approach to organizationwide issues in support of

the digital business, such as customer experience analytics or integrated product life cycle
analysis?
■ How can organizations use analytics to deliver a more sophisticated approach to performance
management?

Related Priorities
Table 1. Related Priorities

Priority Focus

Data and Analytics The right differentiating strategies and practices allow enterprises to fully exploit the
Programs convergence of data and analytics to deliver business value.

Marketing Data and Data and analytics have become the foundation of marketing, driving efficiency and
Analytics effectiveness through better data collection, modeling, optimization and greater
relevance to the consumer.

Customer Relationship CRM and customer experience are business strategies that optimize profitability,
Management and operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and loyalty through the implementation of
Customer Experience customer-centric processes.

Digital Workplace Program A digital workplace program is a business strategy to boost workforce digital dexterity
through an engaging and intuitive work environment.

Source: Gartner

Suggested First Steps

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

IT Leader Coverage

■ "Gartner Analytics Evolution Framework"

■ "Augmented Analytics Is the Future of Data and Analytics"
■ "Take Advantage of the Disruptive Convergence of Analytic Services and Software"
■ "Survey Analysis: Why BI and Analytics Adoption Remains Low and How to Expand Its Reach"
■ "Machine Learning: FAQ From Clients"
■ "Choose Analytics Services by Focusing on Capabilities to Drive Key Business Initiatives"
■ "Shape the Future of Customer Experience With Customer Analytics"

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Technical Professional Coverage

■ "Create a Data Reference Architecture to Enable Self-Service BI"

■ "Agile Data Quality to Maximize Your Business Results"
■ "How to Create a Data Strategy for Machine Learning-Powered Artificial Intelligence"
■ "Solution Path for Planning and Implementing the Logical Data Warehouse"
■ "Making Machine Learning a Scalable Enterprise Reality — From Development to Production"

Essential Reading
Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

IT Leaders Coverage

■ "Five Ways Data Science and Machine Learning Deliver Business Impacts"
■ "Beyond BI Reporting: Engaging Decision Makers Through Data Storytelling"
■ "Leading Upskilling Initiatives in Data Science and Machine Learning"
■ "Prioritize the Six Styles of Customer Analytics for Better Customer Experience"
■ "Organizational Principles for Placing Data Science and Machine Learning Teams"
■ "Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2017"
■ "Hype Cycle for Data Science and Machine Learning, 2017"
■ "Hype Cycle for Customer Experience Analytics, 2017"
■ "Hype Cycle for Back-Office Analytic Applications, 2017"
■ "Market Guide for Data Science and Machine Learning Service Providers"
■ "Market Guide for Event Stream Processing"
■ "Magic Quadrant for Data Science Platforms"
■ "Magic Quadrant for Business Analytics Services, Worldwide"

Technical Professional Coverage

■ "2018 Planning Guide for Data and Analytics"

■ "Solution Path for Planning and Implementing a Data and Analytics Architecture"
■ "Preparing and Architecting for Machine Learning"

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Tools and Toolkits

Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.

IT Leader Coverage

■ "Toolkit: Gartner Analytics Evolution Framework"

■ "Toolkit: RFP for Data Science and Machine-Learning Platforms"
■ "Toolkit: Gartner Analytics Atlas"
■ "Toolkit: Forty Examples of Analytic Dashboards"

Technical Professional Coverage

■ "Identifying and Selecting the Optimal Persistent Data Store for Big Data Initiatives"

Evidence
This agenda initiative emerged from detailed analysis of the source inquiry base of the past couple
of years, overlaid with demand identified from analysis from primary and secondary surveys carried
out during the past year. On top of this, we added the analyst team's insight and ideas with regard
to where the market and industry are heading.

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