Nearly three-quarters of organisations (72%) claim that analytics help them generate valuable insight and 60% say their analytics resources have made them more innovative, according to research commissioned by SAS, a leader in analytics.
That is despite only four in 10 (39%) saying that analytics is core to their business strategy. A third of respondents (35%) report that it is used for tactical projects only. Despite acknowledged value – and most (65%) can quantify this – businesses are not getting the most out of their analytics investments.
However, they are now pursuing rapid analytical insight as a priority as they push into emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of things (IoT).
The research, Here and Now: The need for an analytics platform, surveyed analytics experts, and IT and line-of-business professionals in a wide range of industries around the world. It found that analytics is changing the way companies do business.
This does not just apply to day-to-day operations as it’s also driving innovation – more than a quarter (27%) say analytics has helped launch new business models. There are many identified benefits of an analytics platform, the most common being less time spent on data preparation (46%), smarter and more confident decision-making (42%) and faster time-to-insights (41%).
Marcel Yammine, General Manager at SAS Middle East, said: “During our conversations with regional business leaders, challenges during a ramped-up analytics and AI journey include the need for an analytics platform, and improved availability of skillsets around data science and analytics.
“AI is fast-emerging in the region as a key tool for Digital Transformation, and this calls the need for improved analytics into focus. Through these findings, it is clear that as analytical workloads increase and AI becomes more mainstream, a comprehensive analytics strategy is the ideal route for success.”
Adrian Jones, Director of SAS’ Global Technology Practice, said: “The findings show a strong desire in the business community to boost competitive insight and efficiency using analytics. The majority recognise that effective analytics could benefit their organisations, particularly as they develop their ability to deploy cutting-edge AI. But the number of those effectively using analytics strategically across the organisation could be much higher.”
The survey underscored a lack of alignment in the skills and leadership needed to maximise the potential of analytics. Many companies struggle to manage multiple analytics tools and data management processes.
“If they are to achieve success, organisations must put analytics at the heart of strategic planning and empower analytics resources to drive innovation using a unified analytics platform,” said Jones.
Views differ on the role of an analytics platform: most (61%) believe it’s to extract insight and value from data, but many are split on its other purposes or benefits, such as better governance over data, predictive models and open source technology.
A total of 59% believe another role of an analytics platform is to have an integrated or centralised data framework, while 43% believe it’s to provide modelling and algorithms for AI and Machine Learning.
The responses suggest companies know analytics can help them, but they lack a clear and common understanding of the benefits of using a platform approach across the enterprise and the analytics lifecycle. It would explain why few organisations have a suitable platform in place according to results from SAS’ Enterprise AI Promise Study announced at Analytics Experience Amsterdam.
This revealed only a quarter (24%) of businesses felt they had the right infrastructure in place for AI, while the majority (53%) felt they either needed to update and adapt their current platform or had no specific platform in place to address AI.
Despite the wide variety of uses for analytics, confidence in the end result is high. Respondents on average have 70% confidence that they can derive business value from their data through analytics. Those that invest in data science talent are more likely to see ROI: confidence rises to 72% for those in analytics roles but drops to 65% for standard IT teams.
The same is true when considering the future. Analytics teams are more confident (66%) of their ability to scale to meet future analytics workloads, compared to those in standard IT roles (59%).
The research report ‘Here and Now: The need for an analytics platform’ is the result of a two-part research process. The first phase consisted of in-depth interviews with professionals in 132 business and government organisations across EMEA. These discussions were based on a common set of 15 questions asked of analytics business sponsors, IT decision-makers, heads of analytics and data scientists. The findings from this phase then informed the second part of the research, an online global survey of 477 qualified participants.
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