Business applications and process to become analytics-augmented – Qlik

The computing power present in most end-point and network edge devices can be leveraged to enhance business work applications – which display information streamed from analytics systems – with contextual information and automatic processes, says business information software multinational Qlik global product marketing VP James Fisher.

The inclusion of contextual insights at all levels of business operations and in all work applications and programs will provide fundamentally different ways for companies to seize commercial opportunities and create new services and products.

Enhanced visualisation – with interactive diagrams in relevant business programs that enable the exploration of data and discovery of trends – will enable users to more easily discover value in the data.

“Business intelligence is no longer about reporting and charts, but about how people can explore the data – with the help of appropriate tools – to discover those elements that allow for valuable innovations, services or products to be developed,” he says.

The ability to interrogate data and gain an understanding of its structure and context is also a key skill in businesses to produce data-driven insights.

“The true value of data is not derived merely from the amount, but from the suitable combination of its different elements to address new business problems and create new use cases for the data. We are reaching a tipping point in the analytics industry in terms of analytics-augmented processes,” says Fisher.

Meanwhile, the concept of augmented intelligence is gaining traction as a result of these trends. Augmented intelligence is not more advanced analytics, but rather the ability to direct and leverage the analytics to provide deeper insights.

Building rich, complex models that combine human capability and intuition with the evidence- based outputs of analytics and business intelligence systems will be the responsibility of data scientists in organisations, he adds.

“The acme of data science will be to combine the human ability to ask more complex questions when exploring data with machine learning to create models that can evolve as the user interacts with the data. Getting this right will allow for faster time to insight and return on investment,” says Fisher.

Using analytics systems in all aspects of businesses’ operations is also set to continue, which will empower all levels of users with more information to conduct work more efficiently and accurately.

“Business intelligence and analytics systems must place people at the heart of business processes, as [they entail] the use of advanced analytics and machine-learning technologies by people to better carry out their functions that will create the benefits sought,” he avers.

This focus on people also means that modern business intelligence and analytics systems are becoming more user and context aware, such as being aware of whether a user is using a mobile device to view a report or a tablet with good connectivity. The different contexts will determine what information to display and how the application presents it to the user.

As the use of advanced analytics grows, companies will include their suppliers and partners to enable them to better serve the company and its customers.

“Custom-built analytics systems will see a marked acceleration during this year, as businesses’ use of analytics systems matures and are applied to all aspects of the business to improve its operations,” concludes Fisher.