As the technology that underpins data and analytics continues to advance, consolidation is taking place across the traditional analytics stack. It’s a natural evolution in the lifecycle of technology—and in the case of data analytics, it’s giving rise to a new class of converged platforms that deliver capabilities and use cases never thought possible before.
Most companies today recognize the value of self-service BI, and consolidated data and analytics platforms like Incorta are making it easier to enable than ever before. Old habits and siloed thinking, however, often get in the way.
In our latest eBook, The Analytics Stack is Consolidating… Now What?, we explore how application owners are the key to breaking the cycle. Unlike IT team leads, who often (albeit unknowingly) put their technology agendas ahead of larger business directives by advocating for best-of-breed tools, application owners operate with the bigger picture in mind. Here’s a preview:
Doing What’s Best for the Entire Organization
CIOs are often bombarded by teams across the organization, each wanting best-of-breed tools for their own departments. This effectively holds CIOs hostage to a patchwork of legacy systems, preventing them from transitioning to the best solution for the entire organization.
Application owners can help CIOs answer the kinds of holistic, organization-level questions that need to be asked when considering a piecemeal vs. converged data analytics solution: How many dependencies are baked into our systems? What are the security implications? What is the impact on data accuracy and fidelity? And, most importantly, what kind of company do we want to be?
Laying the Foundation for Data Curiosity
There’s more data than ever, but how do you act on that data in meaningful ways? The key to creating a data-driven culture is making queries fast, easy, and intuitive to run.
In order to create this sort of environment, it’s important to have a converged analytics solution so you don’t bottleneck or silo certain parts of the organization. Nothing drops analytics adoption rates like forcing someone to wait weeks or months for a report. Nobody wants to put extra stress on the data team when it takes such effort to yield results, and that reluctance can easily translate into missed opportunities.
Making Data-Driven Decisions Routine
The more trustworthy your data is, the more data-driven your organization will become. Think about when you have a bad experience with a company or product—when are you likely to give them a second chance? Three years later? Four? It’s the same with data analysis. If you want your entire organization to be data driven, you need to make sure you are delivering trustworthy data. This doesn’t necessarily mean your data is perfect, but that as many people have access to the same view of the data as possible.
Converged solutions allow your organization to give everyone access to data—and, importantly, the provenance of that data—which increases overall data quality, curiosity, and trust. Giving people access to data—and visibility into where it came from—leads to greater levels of engagement across the entire organization.
Download your copy of The Analytics Stack is Consolidating… Now What? to learn why application owners are your best allies when it comes to evaluating approaches to data analytics, and how converged platforms can transform your organization.