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Data Analytics has revolutionized tremendously over the past decade. Proliferation of internet based technologies led to data explosion and the concept of Big Data emerged. Businesses gained access to the cloud, interactive business dashboards replaced the spreadsheets and much more. Along with BI, self-service analytics also witnessed a rise and democratized the product chain. The year 2018 was a major and one of the best years for the business intelligence industry. Let’s see what new we can expect in the field of data analytics from the upcoming year 2019:
1. Rise of explainable Artificial Intelligence
In the year 2018 most of the companies started relying completely on the AI and machine learning for making data-driven decisions. These machine learning applications usually do not offer the algorithm or logic they work on and hence, their trustworthiness was and is being questioned by many people working with them.
It is expected that the data scientists and concerned teams will be pressured in the coming year to explain to the users how the models are constructed and which algorithms are used. People would want a complete transparency between the AI and its working.
2. Increased usage of Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics tools
Big data is becoming the main focus of industry of every science and every field and this need of the companies is giving hype to the usage of Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics tools. Companies are focused on the future and getting answers to certain questions like: what will happen? How can we make it work? How much time it will take? Etc.
The answers to these questions will be given using the Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics tools. Predictive analytics tools let you analyze the current data and historical facts in order to completely understand the target audience and involved opportunities and potential risks for the customers. Whereas, the Prescriptive analytics tools analyze the type of content to consider while taking decisions to achieve a certain goal using techniques like graph analysis, neural networks, machine learning, heuristics etc.
3. Enterprises will get smarter about analytics
Business intelligence tools have a well-defined start and completion date to provide solutions to the users. BI solutions are being actively adopted by most of the companies at the present to impact the business. But merely giving access to the teams is not considered as the complete adoption of the BI tools. Concerned teams especially the Chief data officers are trying to find out the strategies that will help the workforce actively use the solutions provided by the BI tools to benefit the company as its true value is not determined by just being deployed within the organization but how efficiently the solutions are being used for the betterment of the organization.
These tools are easy to use and organizations are already on-boarding workers on Business intelligence platforms, enabling the organizations to create new users and delegate the analytical responsibilities. This will reduce the stress on IT departments by lifting the time reserved for the maintenance and reports. And, all these benefits will lead to more companies using it and getting value out of BI software in the year 2019.
4. Companies’ accelerated migration to the cloud data will fuel modern BI adoption
The year 2018 witnessed a shift in the data storage of a few of the companies from the physical warehouse to the cloud. This shifting provides flexibility and scalability of the data at lower costs to the companies. This also makes it easier for companies to capture and integrate different types of data and store all of them into a more scalable and flexible infrastructure. Many companies have adopted this shift and with this shifting of data to the cloud, analytics too will naturally and obviously follow following the concept of data gravity. Data gravity suggests that the services and applications are pulled in the direction where the data resides. All these benefits of the cloud storage of data are expected to witness an accelerated adoption by the companies in the year 2019.
According to the reports by the Gartner, “Public cloud service market is expected to grow 21.4% in 2018 to a total of $186.4 billion.”
5. Actionable data will put analytics into context
Present day data workers want to complete their tasks with maximum efficiency and as soon as possible. They want to access the data and take actions all in the same workflow. BI platforms are meeting these needs by merging with core business operations, processes and workflows through capabilities like mobile analytics, embedded analytics, API’s and dashboard extensions. The year 2019 is expected to enable more organizations to use data analytics exactly where it is needed and reap all of its benefits.
6. A wave of open source
Open source analytical languages like R, projects associated with statistical computing and graphics have seen a wide adoption in the past year and this trend is expected to accelerate in the year 2019. The year 2019 is expected to witness more free data and software tools to be available for the organizations in the cloud. Start-ups and small organizations will benefit the most from this trend in the coming year, 2019.
7. Advancements in Natural Language will humanize the data analytics
Natural Language Processing integrates linguistics and computer science to help the computers understand the human language. BI vendors are offering a natural language interface to visualizations by incorporating natural language to their platforms in order to enable the users interact with the data naturally without having deep knowledge about BI. Not only this, Natural Language Program is also evolving to support analytical conversations. It means that a human is having a conversation with the system about the data in a way as if it is a human itself. The system leverages the context within the system to understand the intent of the users behind asking a query and creates a natural conversation.
With the evolvement of the Natural language with BI, it is expected to break down the barriers related to the adoption of analytics in the future and in the year 2019.
These seven data analytics trends are expected to transform the industry completely in the year 2019 by transforming the workplaces into data-driven and self- service operations.
