2013 analytics forces: mobile, social and big data

A trio of influences are breaking the mould in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, as it pushes users towards analytics adoption, breaking through the current 30% adoption rate of analytics tools by organisations.

BI and analytics remain a high CIO investment priority, yet according to a user survey by Gartner, CIOs still only get about one-third of potential users to take on analytics tools. However, in 2013 this is set to change with mobile, social and big data influencing actionable analytics. With the upsurge in real-time data, the need for real-time operational intelligence has heightened, simply because companies do not have the manpower to sort through the myriad of data.

Unstructured data from all mediums; social, mobile, e-mail and even news feeds are now available in digital form, easily processed by analytics tools and software. Organisations are starting to recognise the value of data analytics, ranging from decreasing response time to predicting situations before they occur; BI and analytics offer smarter and more cost-effective business decisions.

And better business decisions stem from valuable insights into how well an organisation's efforts contribute to leads and ultimately sales. Social media analytics can organise large amounts of raw social data into predictive consumer behaviour that can influence the outcome of customer interactions. There has been a fundamental shift in consumer behaviour largely due to the accessibility of information that can be regulated; consumers can choose how they receive information about your brand and when. Social media analytics identify the social media sites that are generating the most new business and can recognise users who are sharing your content across other mediums. During 2012, there were more than a billion users on different social media platforms and more than 3.5 billion pieces of content shared each week on Facebook alone.

In a data-driven market where mobile phones are predicted to take over PCs as the preferred Web access device, organisations that are serious about BI and analytics are turning to mobile. According to Forrester's research, 25% of enterprises are already using Mobile BI applications and a further 37% are planning Mobile BI implementations in the short term. The most notable benefit of Mobile BI is the access to real-time information that allows the user to make better-informed decisions on the go. Organisations, in return, can act swiftly to improve the customer experience and achieve the competitive advantage.

2013 will be the crossover to analytics and the way people view analytics will be changed by big data, according to Julian Ardagh, CEO of Effective Intelligence. "Big data that can be analysed will become the basis of competition and growth for businesses and the sheer volume of data generated, stored and mined for insights has become economically relevant to businesses and consumers," says Ardagh.

The volume of data (around 2.5 quintillion bytes a day), the need to analyse the data and the need to deliver insights from the data will be the challenge for the next-generation analytics. Big data, flooding from social media and mobile devices, requires high-performance analytics to examine diverse consumer behaviours and future trends.