David Menninger's Analyst Perspectives

Prevedere Provides Predictive Insights with Analytics and Planning

Posted by David Menninger on Jan 24, 2023 3:15:00 AM

Markets have been more volatile than ever. It creates a need for decision makers to utilize technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to better understand the external factors that impact their business. By identifying these factors, organizations can better plan for changing market environments and seize market opportunities. However, manual modeling is a time-consuming process and results in a limited number of models and tests. Also, updating those models is slow and laborious. With the addition of market volatility, it creates multiple challenges for CFOs, managers and financial planning specialists. With limited exposure to external drivers of demand and delivery, the process becomes very costly. Developing accurate forecasts requires integrating exogenous data with the internal performance data, but it’s challenging to find quality external data and then get that raw data clean enough to input into any model. My colleague, Robert Kugel, recently shared his perspective on using external data for forecasting, budgeting and planning to enhance predictive capabilities.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, AI & Machine Learning

The 2023 Market Agenda for Analytics: Empowering Workforces to Engage

Posted by David Menninger on Jan 17, 2023 3:00:00 AM

Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for Analytics, continuing the guidance we have offered for nearly two decades to help organizations derive optimal value from technology investments to improve business outcomes.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data, Digital Technology, natural language processing, Process Mining, Analytics & Data, Collaborative & Conversational Computing

2023 Digital Technology Market Agenda: Innovation for Digital Agility

Posted by David Menninger on Jan 11, 2023 3:00:00 AM

I’m proud to share Ventana Research’s 2023 Market Agenda for Digital Technology. Our focus in this agenda is to deliver expertise to help organizations prioritize technology investments that improve customer, partner and workforce experiences while also increasing organizational effectiveness and agility.

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Topics: Analytics, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things, Data, Digital Technology, blockchain, AI and Machine Learning, mobile computing, extended reality, robotic automation, Collaborative & Conversational Computing

Oracle Links Analytics and Business Intelligence in the Cloud

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 29, 2022 3:00:00 AM

Organizations conduct data analysis in many ways. The process can include multiple spreadsheets, applications, desktop tools, disparate data systems, data warehouses and analytics solutions. This creates difficulties for management to provide and maintain updated information across multiple departments. Our Analytics and Data Benchmark Research shows that organizations face a variety of challenges with analytics and business intelligence. One-third of participants find it difficult to integrate analytics and BI with other business processes. Participants also find that not all software is flexible enough for the constantly changing business environment, and that it is hard to access all data sources.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, natural language processing, AI & Machine Learning

Make Intelligent Decisions with Decision Intelligence

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 27, 2022 3:00:00 AM

For far too long, business intelligence technologies have left the rest of the exercise to the reader. Many of these tools do an excellent job providing information in an interactive way that lets organizations dive into the data and learn a lot about what has happened across all aspects of the business. More recently, many of these tools have added augmented intelligence capabilities that help explain why things happened. But rarely did any of these tools provide information about what to do or how to evaluate the alternative ways in which you might respond.

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Topics: business intelligence, Analytics, Digital Technology, AI and Machine Learning, Analytics & Data

Master Metrics with Kyligence Zen

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 23, 2022 3:00:00 AM

Analytics processes are all about how organizations use data to create metrics that help manage and improve operations. Yet, the discipline applied to analytics processes seems to be lacking compared to data processes. I’ve pointed out that the weak link in data governance is often analytics. Organizations can also do a better job tying AnalyticOps to DataOps and do more to define and manage metrics. Our research has shown that creating and managing metrics in a semantic model improves analytics processes.

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Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data, Digital Technology, Analytics & Data

Cloud Computing Realities Part 4 — Security and Governance

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 21, 2022 3:00:00 AM

In previous perspectives in this series, I’ve discussed some of the realities of cloud computing including costs, hybrid and multi-cloud configurations and business continuity. This perspective examines the realities of security and regulatory concerns associated with cloud computing. These issues are often cited by our research participants as reasons they are not embracing the cloud. To be fair, the majority of our research participants are embracing the cloud. However, among those that have not yet made the transition to the cloud, security and regulatory concerns are among the most common issues cited across the various studies we have conducted.

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Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Governance, Digital Technology, AI & Machine Learning, Analytics & Data, Governance & Risk

Recognize and Plan for the AI and Machine Learning Skills Gap

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 15, 2022 3:00:00 AM

Recently, I suggested you need to “mind the gap” between data and analytics. This perspective addresses another gap — the gap in skills between business intelligence (BI) and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML).

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Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Digital Technology, AI & Machine Learning, Analytics & Data

Sisense is Sensible for Embedded Analytics and BI

Posted by David Menninger on Dec 7, 2022 3:00:00 AM

Embedded business intelligence (BI) continues to transform the business landscape, enabling organizations to quickly interpret data and convert it into actionable insights. It allows organizations to extract information in real time and answer wide-ranging business questions. Embedding analytics helps tackle the issue of extracting information from data which is a time-consuming process. Our research shows organizations spend more time cleaning and optimizing data for analysis rather than creating insights. On top of that, they are adding more data sources and information systems which in turn introduces more complexity. Our Analytics and Data Benchmark Research shows that organizations face various challenges with analytics and BI. More than one-third of participants (35%) responded that they find it hard to integrate analytics and BI with business processes and connect to multiple data sources. By embedding analytics and BI into business processes and workflows, organizations can enable users to make critical decisions fast, enhancing overall business agility.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, natural language processing, Streaming Analytics, AI & Machine Learning

IBM Builds on Analytics and BI Foundation

Posted by David Menninger on Nov 29, 2022 3:00:00 AM

In today’s data-driven world, organizations need real-time access to up-to-date, high-quality data and analysis to keep pace with changing market dynamics and make better strategic decisions. By mining meaningful insights from enterprise data quickly, they gain a competitive advantage in the market. Yet, organizations face a multitude of challenges when transitioning into an analytics-driven enterprise. Our Analytics and Data Benchmark Research shows that more than one-quarter of organizations find it challenging to access data sources and integrate data and analytics in business processes. Vendors such as IBM offer a broad set of analytics tools with self-service capabilities that allows organizations to reduce IT dependencies and enables decision-makers to recognize performance gaps, market trends and new revenue opportunities. Its technology can simplify data access for self-service applications, enabling users to make business decisions informed by insights and take the guesswork out of decision-making.

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Topics: embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, IBM, IBM Watson, AI and Machine Learning