Analytics and the Digital Transformation Go Hand in Hand

Companies in every industry and of every size are hoping to achieve some of the success that tech-focused companies like Google, Amazon, and Netflix have found. Often, that effort takes the form of a “digital transformation” initiative. I can’t tell you how many times I talk to a potential customer about analytics and they mention that their company’s digital transformation was the impetus for their coming to meet with me. Considering analytics as a critical component of your digital transformation strategy is a smart idea.

The digital transformation is all about companies trying to give their employees access to the right information and technology so they can react faster and help companies become more efficient. In that sense, big data and digital transformation are natural partners. They both enable each other, because analytics are designed to give users the insights they need to make better business decisions faster.

But for companies to truly see this kind of partnership between analytics and their digital transformation efforts, they’ll need to work on creating analytics that are pervasive. That means making sure that analytics are business-user friendly and embedded seamlessly in the application at the point of work. This makes it easy for everyone to benefit from analytics as companies scale up from hundreds of users to hundreds of thousands of users.

Pervasive analytics are business-user friendly

For a digital transformation to truly take off, companies need to be deploying analytics that are easily understood by everyone in an organization, regardless of technical skill. Too often we see companies go through a digital transformation effort that introduces analytics only for the C-suite or data scientists. Widespread, pervasive analytics that span every department and every employee are the way to go.

First, ensuring that analytics are business-user friendly typically ensure higher adoption rates because business users actually understand how they can use the analytics they’re presented with. Second, powerful business-user friendly analytics also have benefits for the company.

Actionable, contextual, and easy-to-understand analytics deliver tangible business value to users in every department. With insights that are easier to act upon and understand, business users are empowered to take action and conduct ad hoc data exploration themselves. That level of self-service frees up IT resources to pursue other work.

Embedded analytics make it seamless for all users

With analytics that are embedded and treated as an extension of the programs that users already use, companies are better positioned for success in their digital transformation. Users are consistently making decisions that improve performance—whether or not they realize it. Ideally, embedded analytics are so seamlessly integrated that a regular business user wouldn’t even recognize what they’re seeing as “analytics.” No more static dashboards or reports to navigate to, embedded analytics put the insights that users need right under their nose in an application.

This is more attainable than it might sound. Companies like GoodData have made huge investments in UI to enable everyone in a company to understand and consume analytics. It doesn’t matter whether analytics are consumed in web portals, web applications, or mobile applications, UI capabilities like Spectrum make it easy for business users to consume insights wherever they are.

If you’re a company looking to analytics to help accelerate your digital transformation, you’ve made the right call. Just keep in mind that for analytics to truly enable a digital transformation, they need to be pervasive, business-user friendly, and embedded within business processes at the point of work.