In our last article in our Anatomy of a Decision series, we examined the benefits that centralized and scalable self-service analytics tools provide IT stakeholders, one of which is IT’s ability to focus on value-added activities that help strengthen business outcomes rather than running reports. Other benefits include reduced analytics solution licensing and maintenance costs, less time spent training staff, and a reduction in the volume of helpdesk tickets from business stakeholders.
One of the benefits to IT staff also suited line of business—higher stakeholder satisfaction. When line-of-business managers—such as finance—are able to access and use their own data to make decisions on their own schedule, stakeholder satisfaction is higher.
Of course, sensitivity around the handling of financial data and with whom it is shared is a key concern for finance departments and companies. As a result, strong data governance capabilities and the ability to deploy on premise should factor in when considering self-service analytics solutions.
To no one’s surprise, there is a strong fiscal incentive for companies to encourage data-driven initiatives. IDG’s 2015 Big Data and Analytics Survey cites that on average, companies are seeing a 20% reduction in operating expenditures (OpEx) and 15% reduction in capital expenditures (CapEx) from their data-driven initiatives. The analytics and visualization lead for a global energy company testifies to similar benefits: “My team last year with 14 of us delivered over $200 million dollars worth of value in just getting the business to take charge of their information. And those numbers don’t come from us, they come from the business, they’re saying with what you’ve shown us and what we’ve done, here is the value back to the business.”
As business continues to become more complex with changing market dynamics and evolving customer behaviors, organizational users require instantaneous access to data to quickly identify trends and shifting business conditions. Companies that are truly data-driven and have infused the use of data and analytics in employees’ daily workflows are able to continuously extract value from their data and analytics investments and achieve competitive differentiation through more precise and targeted decision-making.
Next Steps:
- To learn more about the factors that are driving self-service data discovery requirements, check out the Blue Hill Research study, “Anatomy of a Decision”.
- Try Spotfire and start discovering meaningful insights in your own data.
- Subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on the latest insights and trends in Fast Data and Big Data analytics.
