Can you even measure it—let alone manage it?

Whether you look at it from the perspective of cloud technologies, digital initiatives, software applications or IT architecture, there is one constant in business: the ever-growing need for analytics. But there is far more to the picture than that.

Sure, analytics are fantastic. But I can assure you that, as an executive, I’ve seen my fair share of analytics and reports. And rarely do they accomplish anything—because they are devoid of context, meaning, or even reality.

Meanwhile, the demand-driven vicious cycle for such analytics seems to permeate the world of business. It usually starts with a senior executive craving data—but they have no idea how to get it, nor do they understand the complexities that come with real data. They still love that adage of “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” But in this case, they can’t even access it!

And perhaps that’s the biggest issue of all—the complexity, paired with the idea that actionable data is somehow easy. After all, it’s just a dashboard, right? The issue is this: with so many disparate systems residing in modern IT infrastructure, IT teams continually struggle to consolidate and manage data to make it actionable and insightful to key business stakeholders. Ultimately, the data must be transformed into a cohesive and more intuitive model to enhance business intelligence.

The question then becomes, can this process be made easy?

Well, yes and no. Let’s start with the “no” first. Making data truly actionable in the true meaning of business intelligence is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it’s actually REALLY hard. It involves everything from connecting the aforementioned disparate systems, to embracing artificial intelligence and machine learning—and, of course, making it all work together. This is something that I leave to people who truly know this space.

And this is where we get to the better news surrounding the “yes” portion of the question. Making business intelligence a reality is not up to individual departments like sales, marketing, operations, and so on. Nor is it up to IT. Regardless of how smart every one of those people are in every one of those departments, they too have day jobs. And being an AI and machine learning expert ain’t one of them.

Instead, this again falls into the world of Enterprise Software Services—people who live and breathe this world every day, who understand the nuances and machinery that drive true BI. By engaging with the experts—that is, the true data and analytics professionals using the latest data science technology—you can then start to define mission-critical metrics, prototype data visualizations, and develop comprehensive dashboards. Ultimately, this introduces a whole new world of business intelligence to your organization.

The right expert team will specialize in building future-proof, innovative software products powered by AI, machine learning, and real-time user-driven business intelligence. As a result, you’ll be empowered to create meaningful, actionable data to improve, inform and automate your critical business decisions.

This results in access to in-depth, real-time data analytics about customers, products, processes and so much more—in turn leading to smart, proactive, highly informed decision-making, which is critical to gaining that competitive advantage.

Now, if only you knew a company that did all of this and more! 😉