Gartner Says
Self-Service Analytics and BI Users Will Produce More Analysis Than Data
Scientists Will by 2019
SINGAPORE, January 26, 2018 — Organizations
are embracing self-service
analytics andbusiness
intelligence (BI)
to bring these capabilities to business users of all levels. This trend is
so pronounced that Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2019, the analytics output of business users with self-service
capabilities will surpass that of professional data
scientists.
"The trend of digitalization is driving demand
for analytics across all areas of modern business and government," said Carlie J. Idoine, research director at
Gartner. "Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and SaaS (cloud) analytics and BI
platforms are making it easier and more cost-effective than ever before for
nonspecialists to perform effective analysis and better inform their decision
making."
Gartner's
recent survey of more than 3,000 CIOs shows that CIOs ranked analytics and BI
as the top differentiating technology for their organizations. It attracts the
most new investment and is also considered the most strategic technology area
by top-performing CIOs.
As a result, data and analytics leaders are
increasingly implementing self-service capabilities to create a data-driven
culture throughout
their organization. This means that business users can more easily learn to use
and benefit from effective analytics and BI tools, driving favorable business
outcomes in the process.
"If data and analytics
leaders simply provide access to data and tools alone, self-service initiatives often don't work
out well," said Ms. Idoine. "This is because the experience and skills of business
users vary widely within individual organizations. Therefore, training,
support and onboarding processes are needed to help most self-service users
produce meaningful output."
The scale of the task of
implementing self-service analytics and BI can catch organizations by surprise,
especially if they are successful. In large organizations, popular self-service
initiatives can very rapidly expand to encompass hundreds or thousands of
users. To avoid a descent into chaos, it's crucial to identify the right
organizational and process changes before starting the initiative.
"It's important to confirm
the value of a self-service approach to analytics and BI by communicating its
impact and linking successes directly to good outcomes for the
organization," said Ms. Idoine. "This builds confidence in the
approach and justifies continued support for it. It also encourages more
business users to get involved and apply best practice to their own
areas."
"Creating
and executing a successful self-service initiative means forging and preserving
trust between the IT team and business users," said Ms. Idoine.
"There's no technical solution to build trust, but a formal process of
collaboration from the start of a self-service initiative will go a long way to
helping IT and business users understand what each party needs from the other
to make self-service a success."
"The
success of a self-service initiative will depend hugely on whether the data and
analytics governance model is flexible enough to enable and support the
free-form analytics explorations of self-service users," said Ms. Idoine.
Strict, inflexible frameworks will deter casual users. On the other hand, a
lack of proper governance will overwhelm users with irrelevant data, or create
serious risks of a breach of regulation. "IT leaders must find the right
balance of governance to making self-service successful and scalable," she
added.
"Data and
analytics leaders must support enthusiastic business self-service users with
the right guidance on how to get up and running quickly, as well as how to
apply their new tools to their specific business problems," said Ms.
Idoine. "A formal onboarding plan will help automate and standardize this
process, making it far more scalable as self-service usage spreads throughout
the organization."
Gartner clients can read more in the report "How to Enable Self-Service Analytics and Business
Intelligence: Lessons From Gartner Award Finalists."
Gartner Data & Analytics
Summit
Gartner
analysts will provide additional analysis on data and analytics leadership
trends at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2018, taking place in Sydney, Grapevine,
Texas, London, Sao
Paulo, Brazil, Mumbai,
India and Tokyo. Follow news
and updates from the events on Twitter using #GartnerDA.
About
Gartner
Gartner,
Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading research and advisory company. The
company helps business leaders across all major functions in every industry and
enterprise size with the objective insights they need to make the right
decisions. Gartner's comprehensive suite of services delivers strategic advice
and proven best practices to help clients succeed in their mission-critical
priorities. Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has
more than 15,000 associates serving clients in 11,000 enterprises in 100
countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.
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