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Business intelligence has revolutionized over the past few years. Over the last decade, influential trends have emerged which have changed the way organizations work, interact and collaborate among themselves. The past decade gave a lifetime break to spreadsheets and a big rise to the interactive business dashboards and data visualizations. The year 2017 was a very important year for the business intelligence industry as it bought a few advancements which are even emerging in the year 2018.
Companies of every scale, whether small or large, are now looking for the best business solutions for achieving their set targets. The year 2018 is the year of data quality management and embedded business tools along with other major advancements. Below is the summary of the top business intelligence trends of 2018:
1. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed drastically over the years and have revolutionized the way people interact with the analytics. Live dashboards are actively used to generate alerts and notify the companies about what exactly is happening in the real time. It even alerts the companies when there is something wrong about to happen or happens.
It is predicted that almost all the large organizations will be using advanced analytics and algorithms to make their work easy. Artificial intelligence will be the center of these advanced algorithms that understand the data and predict the next step. Such algorithms will be even capable of decision-making eliminating the human need to make decisions.
2. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural language processing or computational linguistics is the branch of artificial intelligence that studies human language(s) with the help of a computer. NLP recognizes the pattern by analyzing a large amount of data and finds relevant correlations which improve the program’s understanding. It is based on linguistics and deep learning.
The advancements in the technology related to the human-machine relationship have significantly changed the ways organizations work and is also transforming the business intelligence industry as well. In the near future, automation is going to be a crucial part in the future of BI. Applying natural language processing will save the time of officials enabling them to focus on other critical tasks and will increase the overall productivity.
3. Data Quality Management (DQM)
The year 2017 witnessed a significant growth in the analytics trends in the data quality. Data quality directly affects the analysis process and decision-making. With uncountable sources of data collection, a lot of errors and low-quality data are also brought along with useful data. Companies now have understood the impact of data quality on the analysis and decision-making process and hence, have chosen to implement data quality management in the organizations.
Data quality management is expected to become a crucial practice to be followed by companies in order to leverage business intelligence and maximize their returns on the Business Intelligence investment.
4. The Multi-cloud Strategy
Another trend in the BI industry is the cloud strategy. It is not new but is definitely gaining momentum in the year 2018 because of the availability of different cloud-based tools. More and more companies are moving their data and applications to the cloud after realizing the power of cloud analytics. Most of the elements like data sources, data models, analytics models, computing power etc. are all located in the cloud which makes the overall functioning quite easy.
“According to the reports by Gartner, by the year 2019, for 70% of the companies cloud will be one of the most common strategies”
Implementing multi-cloud strategy in organizations reduces risks and provides more flexibility. This implementation brings a little risk and cost of implementation along with it but the multi-cloud strategy is gaining popularity because of its benefits that outshine the little risk and costs involved in its implementation. The adoption of a multi-cloud strategy is on the rise and is expected to grow in the coming years.
5. Data Governance
“According to the Data Governance Institute, “Data Governance is the exercise of decision-making and authority for data-related matters”.
The companies can be seen focusing on data quality and data governance in 2018 and this trend is going to grow only. Various new data preparation methods and tools are expected to provide momentum to this trend and popularize it more. Advanced collaborative process and new data governance models are expected to be developed and implemented within organizations to maximize the business value of analyses while not compromising the overall security.
6. Security
Database security has become a hot debate among organizations. With the recent data breaches of a few most renowned companies like Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Uber, LinkedIn, AOL, Compass bank and much more, the concern for database security has become really crucial for the companies. Whether it is a multi-national company or a small-scale company, data security has attracted undivided attention of the officials.
Database security has become the biggest business intelligence trend of the year 2018 and most of the businesses are looking for solutions that provide maximum security and averts the risk of data breach and losses.
The year 2018 is the year of Business Intelligence innovations and staying up to date with the latest business intelligence trends is the need of the hour. In this highly competitive time, the major BI trends for 2018 (summarized above) need to be adapted to stay ahead of the competition and to maximize the profits.
