Data is becoming more accessible to organizations, but how can you utilize and create value out of your data? Keep reading to get the insights from our expert Mikael Johansson
The foundations have been present in the market for some time now, but recent developments in the end-to-end supporting tools and processes have made data more accessible to everyone. Those who are able to seize the moment can achieve a competitive advantage over their competitors.
At the start of this century, organisations had channelled their efforts towards measuring and following up on their core support systems and solutions. Most mid-sized or large enterprises had invested millions of euros in the building of a rigid and solid financial data warehouse or reporting solution. While there was merit in such investment, reflecting on its outcomes now leads us to the following assumptions:
Everything could have been different if companies had stayed focused on the baseline of their core business processes that really created value. The values thus generated by analytics solutions would have been much greater. Reports suggest that about 85% of the users who use analytics solutions find them sufficient with regards to their business needs. This has been the case for several years and is currently a hassle for many organizations. If business processes are more integrated to analytics solutions, the recognized business value would increase. To fully support and align an analytics solution to the core business processes, it is more or less mandatory to include structured and unstructured, as well as batch and stream data. This has been a challenge for many until recently, but it is certainly feasible with today’s modern data management technologies.
The real value for any organisation is not in reacting to financial issues that have already occurred, but rather having analytical solutions that combine real-time core business data with forward-looking prediction models based on historical outcomes. This has been challenging to achieve due to high costs and technological boundaries. At this point, it is worth remembering the time when customers asked for real-time answers and your reply was: are you really willing to spend that amount of money?
During the last five years, analytics and data solutions have taken huge leaps forward in terms of its ability and functionality. This is driven, to a large extent, by the introduction of public cloud platforms, where the scalability of functionalities is having a higher degree of impact across a shorter timeframe. This ensures that even smaller companies and organisations can utilize capabilities that were only available to enterprise-paying customers in the past.
It has become much more efficient to set up analytics solutions that can identify a baseline of core processes and then simply add more historical supporting systems, such as ERP and HR. Today, there are no barriers to taking this slightly different approach. By doing so, your company can add additional value to your investment.
Having an end-to-end Data & Analytics solution that can support both your users and customers will help you stand out in the market. This will become an even more important way of creating a competitive advantage over time.
To sum up, let’s take a look at the values generated when you adopt an analytics solution that focuses on core processes rather than historic support systems:
Don't hesitate to reach out to us for more information!