5 business analytics trends that shaped the start of 2022 | 7wData

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Insights without actions are irrelevant, so one of the major business analytics trends during the first half of 2022 was an emphasis on enabling data users to easily take what they glean from their analysis and trigger actions.

Analytics vendors' platforms have always enabled customers to develop insights.

That's essentially the point of Business Intelligence -- use data to inform a decision. Until recently, however, once they reached an insight and made a decision, customers had to then go into a different system to act on data.

That is now changing with some vendors enabling users to trigger actions directly from their analytics platforms through integrations with operating systems.

But turning insight into action isn't the only business analytics trend that shaped the first six months of 2022.

Real-time decision-making and integrating augmented intelligence and machine learning capabilities in BI platforms continue to evolve. Meanwhile, as more organizations migrate to the cloud, cost governance measures are becoming more important. And finally, organizations are realizing the benefits of using external data to augment their own data as they make critical decisions.

In mid-June, longtime analytics vendor Tibco previewed the next iteration of Spotfire, one of its three analytics platforms. Like many platforms that predate the cloud but are reorienting toward it, Spotfire 12 will include new cloud-native features as Tibco makes its tools more cloud-friendly and eventually completely cloud-native. In addition, it will feature some new machine learning capabilities and capabilities that better enable administrators to govern their organization's data. Many organizations are discovering that they're overspending on the cloud, so one of the analytics trends early in 2022 has been to put cost governance measures in place. But perhaps the highlight of the update will be the debut of Actions, a tool that will enable customers to trigger actions in their operations directly from their analytics dashboards. Many other business analytics platforms -- Domo, Microsoft Power BI, Qlik and Yellowfin among them -- similarly enable users to develop integrations between their dashboards and operating systems to enable actions directly from their BI tools. "The trend that we're seeing right now is this action-oriented story," said Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy. "Everyone is going after that, which is good. It's been a long time coming. The ability to take action within your BI tool is a trend of the moment." Similarly, David Menninger, an analyst at Ventana Research, said that the trend of tying analytics to actions had been a long time coming. The trend that we're seeing right now is this action-oriented story. Everyone is going after that, which is good. It's been a long time coming. The ability to take action within your BI tool is a trend of the moment. Traditionally, analytics was read-only. The technology enabled customers to derive insights from their data, but once users had reached a conclusion they were on their own when applying that conclusion to their organization. Now, that's changing. And turning insights into action is not merely a trend that shaped the early part of 2022 but one that will continue as even more vendors emphasize the capability, according to Menninger. "We're starting to see vendors offer links between analytics and operational applications," he said. "I expect we will see more of this for two reasons: One, it really helps close the loop on the analytics process, and two, competitive pressures will force more vendors to participate."

While the ability to more easily take action from insight is just now becoming a reality, analytics vendors have been adding augmented intelligence and machine learning tools to their platforms for many years. ThoughtSpot was an early adopter of the trend, from its inception building its analytics platform around natural language search.