How Business Benefits From Self-Service Analytics- Valutrics

CIOs and their tech teams could better support line-of-business units by enabling what’s called “self-service” data analytics, according to a recent survey from Alteryx and Harvard Business Review. The accompanying report, titled “The Untapped Power of Self-Service Data Analytics,” indicates that self-service analytics is helping analysts connect to and cleanse data from data warehouses, cloud apps and other sources in a repeatable manner, while paving the way for deeper and more quickly obtained insights. Through 2020, spending on self-service and related data tools will grow 2.5 times faster than spending on traditional data tools, according to industry research. Yet, overall adoption appears to be in the early stages, as the vast majority of survey respondents admit that they’re not particularly aware of these products. For now, they depend on the IT department or an internal data analytics group for analytics-based decision-making. By helping the business side adopt a “DIY” approach here, CIOs can boost the speed, ease-of-use and quality of their organization’s analytics efforts. “Business leaders are demanding more agile and flexible insight to speed and improve the decision-making process,” according to an introduction in the report written by Rick Schultz, senior vice president of marketing at Alteryx. “Today’s business environment is driving a change … in the supporting technology itself. Self-service data analytics is changing the way organizations are able to operate and make decisions.” Nearly 645 Harvard Business Review readers, many of them being professionals or managers in operations, sales/marketing and strategic planning, took part in the research.