Just last year, a business associate of mine asked me, “Why do you care so much about the analytics? They’re not even that important!” The funny thing is, he failed to understand that now, more so than ever, analytics are a vital tool that every business should be proud to use daily. Enterprise level data analytics are commonly defined as having data and being able to process that data across an enterprise.
Companies are able to collect, analyze, and process all of the varying data points in most functions of their enterprise. Sure, an online shopping site can utilize a user’s prior purchases as well as demographics for analytics. The same company can also analyze how long it takes an employee to process an order, how long it takes them to reply to a message from a customer, and so much more. Effectively, the options are endless as far as what can be analyzed and improved upon. An important factor for a company’s longevity is the ability to adapt to changes.
In our modern era, everything must be fast. Nobody desires to wait patiently for a cup of coffee, and no one has time to waste while waiting for their data analytics to provide them with accurate and utilizable information. The businesses of today and the future are learning very quickly that they need analytics that are agile and are exploratory in nature if they want to succeed. In an article written for Digitalist Magazine, the author, Mario Farag, describes that by embracing predictability, by using analytics and utilizing the cloud, businesses can experience an excellent growth opportunity.
Having a comprehensive, ineffective, and untapped enterprise data lake is an immense problem for today’s advanced companies, but it does not need to be this way. According to Wikipedia, a data lake is defined as “a system or repository of data stored in its natural format, usually object blobs or files”. There are countless ways that a company can utilize their data points to provide powerful analytics. These analytics would be derived from the data lake and processed to create concise and actionable information.
A pitfall that many medium and large business enterprises run into is that even with all of this information they are unsure of what to do with it. By utilizing modern systems, anyone can become an analytics professional. Using commonly available technology, a business is able to collect numerous data points about its employees. After processing all available data points, a company can use that information to understand how individual employees are progressing and performing, as well as areas of improvement. By analyzing the big data behind the scenes, enterprises can improve efficiency, customer service, and profitability.
In closing, there are many ways to utilize the innumerable data points generated by a modern company. If an organization desires to stay ahead of the curve, they must adapt. Enterprise-level data analytics will no doubt remain an important factor to consider due to their ability to shape a company’s future.