A recent Business Analytics survey found that of the organisations that have an intelligence/analytics strategy in place, only a combined percentage of 32% have an advanced strategy.
Partnering with ITWeb, Adapt IT conducted an online Business Analytics Survey to determine how advanced and prepared organisations are to efficiently carry out their business intelligence and analytics strategies. It looked at how such projects succeed or fail, and sought to better understand the customer's viewpoint regarding business intelligence and analytics.
The survey, which ran online for two weeks during April this year, captured responses from a wide range of businesses, across various industries and sizes (a combined 42% are from organisations with more than 1 000 employees).
"A business intelligence (BI) strategy is crucial in creating an information-driven culture," comments Richard Msweli, Durban Executive: Operations at Adapt IT. "This ensures that organisations are better prepared to deal with issues associated with the BI implementation and adoption, hence the reason the solution implementation without strategy is no longer an option."
Msweli believes that BI implementation and adoption is a journey and organisations face multiple challenges based on where they are in this journey.
"The strategy allows organisations to focus on the reasons for embarking on that journey and the problems thereafter during implementation and adoption phases. It facilitates the alignment between organisation's objectives, business strategy, investments and business intelligence," he elaborates.
Two phases of BI
The survey revealed that of those organisations that do have a business intelligence/analytics strategy in place, 8% are in the design phase and 25% are already in progress.
Msweli says: "In principle, BI implementation involves two stages, one being the creation, and the other being the consumption of the BI data."
He adds the effort involved in a BI project varies depending on the complexity and level of organisation's maturity.
It's not surprising the top three objectives for business intelligence/analytics within organisations are operational efficiency (70%), planning and forecasting (67%) and success and strategy management (56%).
"This finding shows that the key objective for the BI implementation is to improve the timeliness and quality of information. However it remains a strategy based initiatives and hence the reason organisations need to align BI with their business objectives," says Msweli.
The results were more or less evenly split when respondents were asked if they are incorporating big data, with 48% indicating yes and 52% saying they are not.
Msweli believes that incorporated data improves predictability, reduces risks and empowers organisations to make better decisions based on facts.
Additionally, it emerged from the survey that 54% of respondents store their data on-premises, while a small percentage (11%) use cloud, and a third of respondents use a hybrid of on-premises and cloud.
"Many organisations are already using a combination of these environments. It all depends on the business goals and the nature of their applications. However it's not a one-size-fit-all approach. Applications with long-term storage, testing environments are suited for public cloud whilst apps using shared storage, that require high performance access to the file system, would be good candidates for private clouds."
If an organisation has already invested a great deal of money or resources in setting up an on-premises environment, they need to evaluate if the migration is worth it, he adds. Msweli believes many organisations prefer hybrid cloud for the above reasons.
It seems from the survey results that the hybrid of on-premises and cloud option is set to rise within the next two years.
"Hybrid cloud infrastructure brings many benefits including agility, scalability and convenience (especially if planning to customise storage and networking components). Researchers are predicting positive growth for the cloud services market, including a 23% compound annual growth of hybrid cloud from 2016 to 2021," notes Msweli.
It transpired that as many as 78% of respondents chose technical criteria when selecting an enterprise intelligence/analytics tool to meet user requirements, while Web delivery capabilities proved to next highest scoring criteria at 62%.
Msweli advises organisations that if a platform does not already exist (including provision for bigger storage), the business must assess the availability and consistency of the platform.
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