The future of business intelligence (BI) lies in consumable analytics, as user expectations and technology continue to evolve rapidly.
This was revealed by Oliver Oursin, worldwide business analyst executive at IBM.
According to Oursin, technology like mobile devices is now at the centre of decision-making and allows users to access different data sets, something that was not possible previously. "In the past, it was all about the desktop PC, but now there is more than that, and we need to address that."
Thus, he said, when deploying BI on mobiles, organisations should use consumable analytics, which are engaging, extensible and can be accessed anywhere. "These analytics should be focused on engaging and immersive experiences for the everyday user," he said.
Oursin added that consumable analytics should incorporate new visuals to solve emerging business problems, and that users should be able to visually interact with data everywhere and anywhere.
"The analytics should also be simple, intuitive and self reliant to drive adoption among non-technical business users," he explained. "They should also deliver interactive capabilities, including transition and animations, to enhance the end-user experience."
He added that consumable analytics enable organisations and their partners to create integrated, custom visualisations. For Oursin, the right visual displays can make it much easier to understand the results of complex analytics and also increase user adoption.
However, he pointed out that pie charts, gauges and all things circular must be avoided, as they are generally hard to read, require more vigorous interpretation, and take up too much valuable space.
For example, he said, it is almost impossible to draw a meaningful comparison between the different pie segments, whereas the same data, turned into a bar chart, is presented in a clear, concise way that takes up half the space, while making it easy to come to an accurate conclusion.
"We need to use intelligence on selecting the right charts," he said.
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