Data analytics are creating huge opportunities, driven by three fundamental forces, said James Fisher, VP of global product marketing at Qlik. Fisher was speaking at the Qlik Southern Africa Summit 2017 held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg last week.
Fisher explained the three fundamental forces that he believes will drive businesses in 2017 are an explosion of data and content, an explosion in computing power and a rise of the information activist.
"Business will be driven first of all by this idea of the explosion of data. There is essentially so much more information that is available to us; the question really becomes 'how do we drive insight and get the real value from that data?' When you enter the idea of the immense computer power at our fingertips, not just in terms of the actual power of the computer itself, but in that true computer power resides right at the edges of your organisations. It is there to multiply the rise of the information activist, the rise of the individual who wants to take advantage of the data that's available to them to enable them to do their job better or be better at their personal life, such as for fitness," explained Fisher.
Fisher said the idea of a data analytics-driven landscape in both business and personal life creates a unique opportunity to drive insight wherever we are. He encouraged data literacy and awareness of the opportunities it brings. The definition of what it means essentially to be data literate is to have "the ability to read, work with, analyse and argue with data."
He also highlighted two key trends that he believes will be dominant in 2017 moving forward. "The first of those is visual rendering moving to context-driven visualisation and analytics. It's this idea that visualisation will move from simply analysis only to something that seats right across the information supply chain.
The second trend he highlighted was around "big data", saying there is an enormous amount of data available. He refers to research that has shown that 80% of all investments in data are essentially worthless. "It's a terrifying statistic. So as we move through this year, we expect to see real value starting to come out of some of those investments, not because of the amount of data that exists, but because of the combinations of different elements of data which people are actually able to bring together to address this problem."
According to Fisher, data will ultimately become more solution-oriented, and that will be the tipping point in terms of how the market moves to real value from all the data that exists.
"It's not about the amount, but the ability to drive combinations of data to drive new insight. The other element to this is using AI to the context or using corporate intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence is how we essentially drive corporate intelligence, not by providing broad-based analytics, but by advancing analytic capabilities," concluded Fisher.
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