Services for Organizations

Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection

Consulting & Strategy Sessions

Ventana On Demand

    Services for Investment Firms

    We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

    Consulting & Strategy Sessions

    Ventana On Demand

      Services for Technology Vendors

      We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

      Analyst Relations

      Demand Generation

      Product Marketing

      Market Coverage

      Request a Briefing



        David Menninger's Analyst Perspectives

        << Back to Blog Index

        Make Better Decisions with Collaborative Analytics


        In my perspective on decision intelligence, I lamented the fact that business intelligence technologies have left the rest of the exercise to the reader for too long. Making a decision is a process that involves many steps and many people. Decision-making is so complicated and divorced from day-to-day business processes that organizations have had to create entirely separate teams to focus on the analytics and data to support it. One aspect of the decision-making process that can be enhanced by technology is collaboration.

        Rarely are decisions evaluated, made and implemented by a single individual. This is true regardless of whether the analytics to support the decision are done by a separate team. Data needs to be collected and analyzed to determine what happened. Alternative responses or scenarios must be developed and evaluated to determine the best course of action. Typically, some debate takes place since the decision(s) will impact multiple parts of the organization. In addition, there is uncertainty and risk involved in the various scenarios, so additional subjective input must be considered. Ultimately, a person or group authorized to make the decision determines which course of action to implement.

        But the process doesn’t stop there. Once the decision is made, it must be communicated to those involved in implementing the response. A disciplined and well-governed organization would want to monitor the implementation to ensure the plan has been carried out as instructed. That same organization would want to document the entire process from end to end both for compliance purposes and to share the knowledge of the decision-making process with others. Organizations recognize the importance of collaboration software in analytics processes. Two-thirds (68%) consider it important or very important. So, why not use technology to help support the collaboration involved in decision-making? There are many technologies available that benefit these processes.

        Organizations should consider the following types of capabilities for collaborative decision-making:

        • Direct sharing of analyses with others.
        • Discussion groups, wall posting and broadcast messaging.
        • Workflow management and automation.
        • Alerts and notifications.
        • Governance and compliance.

        Most analytics tools make it relatively easy to share analyses with others. Typically, this involves granting permissions to different users or roles. Often, analyses can be shared other ways as well, such as emailing an analysis or sharing a URL that links to the analysis. Unfortunately, too many products stop there. Going beyond those basic capabilities, it is helpful when individuals can attach comments to the analyses and mark up the analyses with annotations directly on the screen. Ideally, those comments are searchable in the catalog of analytic objects. The comments may also be restricted in some cases to certain individuals, just like other elements of data. It’s also helpful when individuals can like or endorse analyses, helping to identify which analyses may be most valuable.

        Threaded discussion groups, wall posting and broadcast messaging were popularized by social media platforms. These techniques facilitate dialog and knowledge-sharing with stakeholders. Not only do messages get information to the people involved in decision-making, but they also form a body of knowledge that can be searched by others in similar situations. All of these capabilities are valuable in analytics processes.

        But merely communicating about decisions is insufficient. Organizations should support and manage the workflows around analytics processes as well. Workflow management and automation tools help ensure the proper actions are taken both during and after the decision-making process. If a decision is needed, workflow management can be used to route the information to decision-makers and track the status of their review process. At any point in time, the status of the decision-making process is known and, if necessary, a task can be delegated or escalated to move it to completion.

        Tracking the discussions and workflows associated with analytics also provides a foundation for good governance. Decision-making processes can be documented for compliance purposes and reviewed for both Ventana_Research_2023_Assertion_BI_BI_Collab_Compliance_15_Seffectiveness and efficiency. In an ideal world, even the training of individuals on the use of technologies involved in the process could be tracked – and some tools do this already.

        Organizations should have higher expectations than merely sharing analytic objects and documents. Analytics and BI vendors are adding collaboration capabilities to products and integrating with external collaboration platforms. In fact, we assert that by 2025, 8 in 10 BI software platforms will include collaborative capabilities designed to support organizations’ decision-making, task management and compliance requirements associated analytics . Putting these collaboration capabilities in place helps facilitate better decision-making and more efficient decision-making processes.

        Regards,

        David Menninger

        David Menninger
        Executive Director, Technology Research

        David Menninger leads technology software research and advisory for Ventana Research, now part of ISG. Building on over three decades of enterprise software leadership experience, he guides the team responsible for a wide range of technology-focused data and analytics topics, including AI for IT and AI-infused software.

        JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

        Our Analyst Perspective Policy

        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

        View Policy

        Subscribe to Email Updates

        Posts by Month

        see all

        Posts by Topic

        see all


        Analyst Perspectives Archive

        See All