Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) tools have been around for decades, successfully analyzing data and presenting analytical findings in easy to view reports, summaries, graphs, maps and anything else that makes the information more accessible. With the advent of more data and web-enabled applications, there are now more opportunities than ever to leverage the power of BI. The following challenges being faced by businesses today are some examples of how BI tools are being utilized to solve major issues.

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

With the number of organizations relying on artificial intelligence and machine learning increasing daily, it’s more important now than ever that BI tools are being utilized to ensure these new devices can be trusted. When we think of AI, we think of machines that possess a level of human understanding that allows it to learn and automate decision-making.

Right now many machine learning applications don’t have a system in place to help us learn what led them to make certain decisions, leaving people unsure that they’d make the same decision as a human. Without that trust in place, companies and organizations will never feel completely safe implementing AI into their day to day tasks.

While studies show that 38 percent of businesses have already implemented AI in some form, that number is expected to grow significantly. Business intelligence systems have been put in place as a solution to monitor machine learning devices, and show businesses the trail of thoughts, so to speak, that led to the decision that was made.

When business leaders can see a visual representation in a graph or summary of exactly how an AI machine comes to conclusions, they’re far more likely to trust that it will offer few errors and consistency across the board. This is especially important for companies handling pharmaceutical and financing offers.

Humanizing Data

BI tools have always been able to transform data into visual information such as charts and graphs, but modern BI tools are changing the game by humanizing the data. Many business intelligence systems are offering a natural language interface that allows users to interact with their data in a natural way. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), which combines computer science and linguistics to help devices understand the human language, users can have a conversation with their data and ask it questions rather than searching through the charts and reports to find what they’re looking for.

Additionally, these questions do not need to be phrased in a certain way in order to be answered correctly. Similar to chatbots most of us have used at one point or another, humanizing data saves time and is a business intelligence trend we can all look forward to.

Self-Service BI

One of the biggest business intelligence trends of 2019 so far has been self-service BI. Without this feature, companies are forced to rely on their IT team to run data reports for them. Modern self-service business intelligence tools, however, allow anyone to run reports and view analytics right from the dashboard. Not only does self-service BI offer users the ability to personalize analysis of data to suit their particular needs, but they can also input private local data straight from a spreadsheet.

Using self-service BI tools allows businesses to stay on top of the competition with more accessible, up to the minute reports. Larger companies especially will often recognize that not all employees will have the same needs when it comes to BI reports. Surveys have shown that only 1 to 5 percent of BI users have the knowledge and skills of a business analysts that allow them to use the advanced functions of self-service BI tools while a majority of users will only need access to the dashboard and basic reports. User abilities are diverse and self-service systems accommodate for that.

Data and Action in the Same Place

Actionable insights have been in high demand for quite some time as people want to be able to see their data and actions in the same place. Traditional business intelligence systems required users to view the analysis of their data in one place and then go to another in order to take action. Forrester reports that while 74% of firms say they want to be “data-driven,” only 29% say they are good at connecting analytics to action. Modern BI options are changing things and working to make that easier.

BI tools are now able to merge with core business operations, workflows, and processes in order to allow users to engage in actionable analytics. This is done in a variety of ways such as through the use of embedded analytics, dashboard extensions, mobile analytics, and APIs. Users can now view data and take action all in the same place.

Are you ready to bring actionable insights to your business intelligence system? Learn now how LaunchWorks LaunchBI can improve your business by visiting our website. Once we’ve convinced you that you can’t go wrong with our embedded analytics solution, request a demo and see how it’s done.

About the Author

Renee Briggs is a senior BI systems administrator for LaunchWorks.com, a Stone Door Group Company. Stone Door Group specializes in DevOps based digital transformation of the enterprise. To learn more about how we can help cloud enable your analytics, drop us a line - letsdothis@stonedoorgroup.com.