Some companies go to great lengths to protect their data. Why? Because it’s VALUABLE. However, an EMC-sponsored study found that only about 20% of the world’s data is protected. Shocking, right?
But even more shocking is that only 1% of the world’s data is analyzed. How can you tap into that vast resource? With analytics.
Analytics involves more than just gathering piles of data and running an occasional query. According to Infoworld, a survey conducted by Gartner showed that analytics involves leveraging data “in a particular functional process (or application) to enable context-specific insight that is actionable.” Companies that skillfully use analytics understand that they’re no longer looking for “business intelligence.” Instead, they’re looking to create an “intelligent business.”
Money well spent
In another article by Forbes, a recent report from IDC revealed that companies spent $2.2 billion on advanced and predictive analytics software alone in 2013. This figure doesn’t include the billions spent on the servers and storage systems used to house the data being analyzed.
Why are companies making massive investments in analytics? A study conducted by Bain & Company found that companies that use analytics intelligently are
- 2x more likely to be in the top quartile of financial performance within their industries.
- 5x more likely to make decisions much faster than their competitors.
- 2x more likely to use data very frequently when making decisions.
- 3x more likely to execute decisions as intended.
Unfortunately, most companies don’t use analytics well, according to a survey conducted by A.T. Kearney and Carnegie Mellon University. Four hundred and thirty participating companies worldwide were placed into four categories based on their analytic competency and ability to use analytics to improve business results: leaders, explorers, followers, and laggards. Only 10% of the companies fell into the leader category. Twice as many (20%) were seen as laggards.
The survey results revealed that leaders and laggards take different approaches when it comes to building an analytics-focused culture. For example, leaders concentrate on cultivating cross-functional collaboration, enhancing users’ capabilities, and building users’ confidence in utilizing analytics; whereas laggards focus mainly on the technology and take a “wait and see” attitude.
Creating a successful analytics-focused culture
To run an intelligent business, you must have a culture in which your company’s leaders commit to the widespread use of analytics and use data to support their business strategies and decisions. The company leaders also need to put systems in place to ensure data quality, and provide the tools needed to make the data available to all company employees so that they can use it to make decisions and take action. The employees, in turn, need to back up their decisions and actions with data.
Arisant can help your company create a successful analytics-focused culture by building an Oracle-based solution that consists of these key technology components:
- Oracle Data Warehouse — Arisant leverages the Oracle database’s native warehouse features to build a secure, highly available data warehouse to consolidate and organize all your data so it can be easily managed, accessed, and analyzed.
- Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tools and data quality tools — Arisant uses of a variety of Oracle technologies (e.g., Warehouse Builder, Data Integrator) to gather data residing in separate systems, cleanse and transform that data into high-quality information, then load it into the data warehouse. To address typical data quality challenges, Arisant leverages the Oracle Data Quality and Oracle Data Profiling tools.
- Oracle Business Intelligence Suite — Arisant uses the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite to address the full spectrum of needs that an intelligent business might face, including the need for real-time predictive analytics, mobile analytics, and ad-hoc analyses.
- Oracle Data Mining — Arisant uses Oracle Data Mining to help analyze large volumes of data to establish relationships and detect patterns that will accurately predict your customers’ and prospects’ behavior.
- Oracle OLAP — Arisant uses Oracle OLAP, a calculation engine native to the Oracle database, to support the advanced analysis of data residing in your data warehouse.
