Top BI Trends for 2019

Analytics Everywhere

Expect to see a lot more embedded analytics in 2019. The mainstream appetite for analytics has been on a steady rise. We see it in how Apple breaks down our battery usage on our phones, and in the way our credit card statements have become a dashboard of our expenditure. Data literacy is on the rise too, and people want access to actionable insights at their fingertips. Analytics can now easily be embedded in websites, ERP systems, CRM systems and internal intranet. Is your organization pushing analytics to the places it’s needed?

Yesterday’s News is Old News

Analytics is going operational and demand for real time information is rapidly increasing. The typical BI platform is going to shift from reporting on ‘what happened yesterday’ to ‘what happened 5 minutes ago, and what do we predict will happen in the future’. More and more companies are looking to use BI dashboards to monitor operational processes in real time, whether it be the factory floor or the cash register. Quicker access to information means quicker decision making and this will create a competitive advantage for companies who can get it right. What’s your company doing to increase the pace of the data cycle?

The BI Crystal Ball – Automated Machine Learning

As they say, good data scientists are unicorns, and this has prevented most organizations leveraging the power of predictive modeling in their BI platforms. The explosion of automated machine learning tools changes this and brings the power of data science to the masses. The use of machine learning tools will become just one more item in the skill basket of a BI Developer. For every piece of retrospective analysis, we will ask what the forward-looking view looks like. I’m sure we’ll look back in ten years’ time and wonder how we all used to all make business decisions flying blind.

Cognitive Computing Will Lead the Way

Cognitive insights and suggestions will start to infest our BI platforms more and more. The power of data lies in self-service and getting analytics and actionable information to the front line. The power of cognitive insights is just one tool that will help enable the masses and guide their approach to building and communicating analytics. Would a BI tool with a cognitive engine help accelerate the uptake of analytics in your organization?

Data Quality, Governance and Trust

The rise of self-service analytics has quickly prioritized the need for a data quality strategy. The days of I.T. being the gate keeper are slipping away, and we’ll see a new breed of tools to monitor, manage and act on data quality issues in our BI platforms at the front line.

What Else?

Steaming Data: We’re going to see increasing integration of streaming data from edge devices into BI platforms and this is going to demand a hybrid approach to accommodate batch and streaming data sources. Think IoT, sensors, thermometers and wearable devices.

Mobile Analytics: This medium is growing but not as rapidly as predicted, attributed in part to many companies lacking a robust mobile strategy.

Advances in Natural Language Processing: This will enable business users to interact with their BI platforms via written and verbal commands across widely used mediums such as Slack.