The Future of Business Intelligence Automation – Predictions and Trends
Competition in the business world is a survival of the fittest, to the extent that business executives and sales representatives are willing to study a library of books on businesses and sales. In this environment, adapting to business intelligence automation practices and implementing its tool has become a clear path to gaining a competitive edge in the market.
What is Business Intelligence?
Business intelligence, in a nutshell, is more like a tool used by many companies to help them better understand their customers. Otherwise known as BI, this software turns data into Information, which is then transformed into insight. It is this insight that helps the end-users to make informed and better data-driven business decisions.
Transformation of Business Intelligence Automation
Neglecting the power of Information and data is no longer an option. A few years back, we saw the adoption of Gen one BI. It was established to be the cornerstone for the growth of businesses. However, due to the lack of proper analytical tools, the companies usually conducted reporting projects dependent on on-premises data driven by the IT team.
In the year 2016, we witnessed Gen two BI. It was developed from the perspective of end-users and is being used by many organizations, which not only made data easier to access but also much easier to consume. The rise of self-service analytics, data democratization, and the integration of dashboard software changed how stakeholders access Information.
However, as time passes, the trend is headed toward the demand for more accessible ways of accessing data-based insight by end-users to drive business value. Now, Gen three BI is around the corner, thanks to exponential technological advancements. One critical development that is expected to happen is innovation regarding the BI user interface.
How is Business Intelligence Evolving?
BI has already advanced and has existed for some time now. Its usefulness varies depending on the needs and how progressive a particular company is. Following are a few key factors and predictions on ‘how the BI will evolve’ and become more involved in the market:
1. Data Visualization will Alter the Way of Using Information
Data visualization refers to the ability to display data and Information in a graphical illustration. It uses elements like charts, graphs, and maps to provide a way to understand the trends and patterns of data.
It’s safe to assume that the human mind is a little biased towards visual Information, as it is more likely to remember what it saw than what it heard. So, Data Visualization would more or less change the way we use Information and is likely to play a crucial role in business intelligence to help people better understand the data.
The future, therefore, seems thrilling as there are so many sectors beyond BI where it can be applied. For example, the nonprofit sector can make use of Data Visualization to raise awareness about important problems at hand.
Whatever lies ahead, it doesn’t take too much imagination to guess that Data Visualization will become an integral part.
2. End-users Demanding New BI Capabilities
Data is easily accessible to everyone nowadays, thanks to the evolution of BI technology over the years. New platforms now make it easier for each individual at every department of an organization to do their analysis and data exploration without any worries.
However, with this extraordinary access came the demands for new and more self-service BI capabilities. To satisfy such demands, vendors develop technologies like augmented analysis that automate time-consuming processes. Technological advancements in areas like dashboarding and reporting capabilities that allow users to gain insight, regardless of their skills, can also be seen.
3. Complexities in Businesses Will Increase
Complexities regarding data types, sources, and platforms will increase. The number of data sources, including social media activity related to the company, captured cellphone interaction, and web clicks, will keep growing more rapidly. Moreover, the real-time data stream that not many companies consider at the moment but might want to track in the future is likely to increase its importance as well.
To make things even more complex for businesses, companies frequently use on-premises and cloud platforms as part of their IT infrastructure to try to act on all of the information quickly. On top of that, many enterprises still use legacy on-premises applications for planned upgrades that may or may not even occur.
4. Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence
Cloud computing serves as the repository for both structured and unstructured data, which will become more of a focus for BI solutions soon. ‘Cloud Computing’, which is one of the most trendy buzzwords of the ongoing decade, has now become a reality.
Services hosted on the servers over the Internet are accessed by cloud service providers’ infrastructure, which includes data storage and processing. Many businesses and companies use password-protected VPNs to access Information and resources from off-site offices or home computers.
That being said, existing companies with IT that have not embraced cloud computing yet, should take full advantage of cloud technology for all their technological needs.
Factors Influencing BI Trends
To be data-driven means keeping an eye on emerging trends as the future of BI is being determined. Let’s explore some upcoming BI trends.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as AI, along with machine learning, are the future trends that have taken every business aspect by storm, with BI being no exception. We can rely on these technologies to provide us with basic analysis with a single touch of a button, such as presenting trends or Basic KPIs.
The exponential evolution of AI technology has made it possible for engineering and hyper-automation to gather business intelligence with ease. The outsized potential of this technology guarantees to change the way we interact with data analytics, how we leverage insights, and ensure security for data management. These technologies can perform complex tasks with ease that were previously handled by human intelligence and are used to create dashboard reporting and real-time data analysis. However, just like in most industries, many aspects of business intelligence require human interpretation and touch.
Automation
This emerging trend is all about automating as many activities as possible that in the past needed human involvement. We will witness a greater migration to automated business intelligence systems than we have seen in the past few years. Automation will take most tasks over, starting from data discovery and management to the presentation of insights through automated data storytelling.
The rise of this hyper-automation will enable businesses to automate most processes with the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning and some tools, completely changing the way you interact with data. Though some BI processes can already be automated, in the future, less manual work will be needed to bring data together, and actionable business analytics will be even easier to access.
Data Security
In this modern era, many cyber attackers try to get a peek at companies’ online data. What’s worse is that these cybercriminals target both small and big businesses. The Data Security trend picked up in 2019, and we predict that businesses and companies will continue to look for more secure answers.
Having said that, data is the most important thing for any organization, and one of the key elements of BI practices includes the safety and management of that data. Business Intelligence tools will continue to adopt mesh architecture, which provides a scalable solution for the protection of data on the cloud, application data, and many more.
Final thoughts
There you have it; we have outlined the business intelligence trends for the coming years in this article. Technologies like business intelligence (BI) have a lot to offer in our crisis-ridden world: they help businesses analyze their issues, identify holes in their systems and processes, restructure their operations, make wise decisions, and safeguard long-term growth and profitability.
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