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Democratise analytics to become truly data driven


Johannesburg, 05 Mar 2021

According to a study MicroStrategy carried out in 2020, 97% of enterprise decisions are data deprived. People rely on gut decisions because they typically are unwilling or don’t have time to find the information they need to make more informed decisions.

This is according to Nkuli Mbundu, senior account executive at Microstrategy, who will be speaking at ITWeb Business Intelligence Summit 2021, to be held from 9 to 11 March as a virtual event.

According to him, the effort to find data is deemed cumbersome, particularly when information pertaining to a subject is derived from multiple data sources.

“Secondly, people who could benefit from access to analytics simply lack the skills needed to conduct their own analysis. Traditional BI tools in the market today are deemed too complex to work with for the average worker and hence they defer to the business analysts to generate insights. This way, analytics remain departmental and the creation of insights does not effectively reach the user in the way they would want to consume them.”

Democratising analytics

Speaking of how they could improve, he says: “We recommend that organisations should adopt an analytics democratisation strategy to solve the last mile problem. For this to happen they need to invest in an open architecture independent of a specific software vendor products.”

He says analytics should be easy enough to generate for the average data consumer and should be visually appealing in order to create a modern, rich customer experience. “This approach, coupled with end user training, presents an opportunity to improve end user adoption in the last mile.”

In terms of how democratising analytics can help transform the business, Mbundu says each day, business people make decisions that can impact the business positively or negatively, depending on the speed of obtaining accurate data to inform a decision.

“Consider how much time we spend reading e-mail and picking snippets of a subject to make a decision on, then having to defer to system reports and business analysts to obtain a comprehensive picture. Today data-driven cultures get stuck at the top.”

In fact, he says 81% of management teams have some access to their organisation’s data and analytics, 76% of executives have access, and only 52% of front line employees have access. “The decision cycle could be significantly shortened by making insights immediately available to the right person at the moment of decision making.”

The goal should to break down data silos within the organisation. “Departmental silos commonly build up when individual business units deploy separate systems without any centralised coordination. There is no quick and dirty mechanism to apply data governance but, with the right framework in place from the onset, usability adapts and evolves with the continuous enhancements to the process.”

Mbundu, together with Roxane Edjlali, senior director, solution management at Microstrategy, will be presenting on "Becoming a data-driven organisation by enabling seamless access to trusted analytics for everyone".

Delegates attending the talk will learn about the three main requirements for analytics: fast response, an open open analytics platform and cost control.

Governance without sacrificing usability

Register now for ITWeb’s annual BI, data, analytics and AI event. It is an invaluable platform to engage online with senior decision-makers, and hear from local and international experts on how to embrace digital transformation to create a data, analytics and AI driven culture. For more information, and to register, click here.


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