August 3, 2021
Owing to the pandemic and its economic impact, companies are being forced to restructure their business model. Technologies are evolving to meet the business needs towards digital transformation. Therefore, BI is evolving with the cloud computing, new age analytics, data security, data management, collaborative tools, and mobile technology.
Let us see what some of the top BI trends that may dominate in 2021 and beyond.
Businesses are investing in better analytics and becoming more metrics-driven in their organizational processes. Average consumer engagement with a brand happens on up to six touch points before purchases. AI-powered predictive analytics help effective data forecast on user engagement and business outcome. As companies embrace data-driven processes and workflows, the Big Data technology will be an important business intelligence trend.
The emergence of big data will move the future business in the cloud. Cloud as a strategy ensures effective business operation with more connectivity, reduced risk, and flexibility. So other BI elements, including data storage, analytics, data models and sources, and computing power are also moving to the cloud. business-friendly tool that can ensure corporate scalability. In addition, it connects with the latest technology solutions and database structures. This helps provide self-service and governed information distribution across an organization and improved business planning.
Data-driven culture, data governance, and self-service BI have been consistent trends. Data storytelling methodology for tailored communication for a specific audience has been developing too. Data storytelling/narrative offers an enhanced decision-making power. Therefore, there is a significant move in BI from simple data analysis to its customised interpretation. It analyses data and conveys the analysis in a much more understandable way and provides practical solutions. This will also change the way businesses use data to engage with customers and help them adopt new ideas as per the business model.
The new smart BI trends and their implementation cannot be useful without the qualitative value of the data around which it is built. This need for accurate, up-to-date, consistent, and complete data has resulted in the rise of Data Quality Management (DQM). DQM uses a combination of the best people, the right technology, and an organisational culture that provides relevant and accurate data. So, businesses will have to implement data quality processes to make effective use of BI.
More data on the cloud also increases the risk of a data breach and needs improved data security. In recent times the Air India breach in India or the Experian data breach in South Africa saw data of millions being compromised. Lack of data security results in decreased market value, significant loss of resources, and public trust. Moreover, the emerging BI maintains accuracy and integrity of personal data, updating it as appropriate and protects it from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Therefore, businesses are looking towards enhanced data security in implementing BI and secured solutions for business data.
This combination is known as collaborative BI and allows businesses to streamline their data-driven decision-making. The need is for a collaborative business environment through the sharing of simplified analytics and reporting as well as problem-solving and ideas’ sharing.
The business model is becoming more decentralised primarily because of the lockdown and social distancing. So, the growth of Mobile BI is a normal outcome as it allows access to business data, metrics, and dashboards on mobile devices. New vendors and solutions are emerging to provide platforms to enable:
DBP’s BI Solutions on PowerBI and/or Tableau gives you better business insight to help you step up your decision making.
Interested to discuss more, please feel free to contact the author at ashish.bhalla@dbppl.com
Ashish has almost 30 years of industry experience in a wide range of business solutions primarily focusing on end-to-end customer experience management. He is the founder and CEO of Digital Business People (DBP), an omni-channel customer experience management company headquartered at Singapore with it’s development and delivery centres in India.