Future is Invisible Analytics. It Help Teams Make better Decisions
The
future of work is consumer-style analytics experiences, seamlessly infused into
user workflows.
This
may sound counterintuitive coming from an analytics company, but analytics are
not the “point” of analytics software. Making smarter decisions and delivering
better business outcomes are the main reasons companies of all sizes in every
industry want to drive their teams to make use of business intelligence.
But
generations of technological innovation (better data visualizations, cloud
analytics, and self-service tools) plus the rise of analytics-focused cultures
in workplaces have failed to deliver on the many promises analytics hold;
analytics adoption among in-house workforces’ remains stalled at around 30%.
However,
in survey after survey, respondents’ rate using analyzed data to drive
decision-making as vital to the success of their companies — including
respondents to our Harvard Business Review study, where 89% of those polled
stated that analyzed data is important to their organization’s innovation
strategy.
Faced
with a need to put actionable intelligence into the hands of users and stalled
adoption rates, what are companies to do in a world where getting the most out
of their data is a key to staying competitive? The answer: Make analytics
invisible. By making workplace embedded analytics more like today’s consumer
experiences, infusing intelligence into applications workers are already using,
and focusing on outcomes (instead of technology), companies can increase their
use of data and analytics and evolve how they do what they do.
Decision-makers want consumer-style
analytics
Analytics
are all around us today. In 2022, consumers executed 110 billion downloads from
the Google Play Store and 32.6 billion from the Apple App Store. Many of these
consumer-centric apps already contain analytics seamlessly infused into the
experience.
Guidance
systems like Google Maps and Waze are becoming more intelligent, understanding
when a user is on their daily commute, suggesting optimized routes, and even
sending alerts when they should leave to arrive on time. Meanwhile, music
services like Spotify constantly analyze listeners’ preferences as they “like”
or skip songs and recommend new artists, albums, and tracks they might enjoy.
Google Calendar has recently begun showing users insights like the amount of
time they’re spending in meetings, who they meet with most often, and more.
These
are all invisible analytics experiences that consumers — like the people on
your teams — have come to know, love, and expect over time (without them even
really realizing it). They want their workplace analytics served up the same
way. The key to getting users to actually avail themselves of insights derived
from analyzed data is to make the experience as seamless, invisible, and
consumer-style as possible.
Use analytics to empower other
applications
COVID-19
made remote work a must for every industry able to facilitate it. Essential
services like healthcare and foodservice can only be done face-to-face, but
other sectors (especially those featuring high-tech companies) have pivoted
hard to digital models.
This
shift has led to an increase in the number of different business programs
workers use every day. A recent study from identity-management company Okta
reported that in 2020, the average company had 88 apps in use across the
organization; some companies had almost 200! Gartner predicts that worker
reliance on these apps will only go up over time, as remote work continues to
be the norm for an increasingly distributed workforce.
Think
about your own internal teams: How many applications are they using on a daily
basis? Zoho, Zoom, Hubspot, Microsoft Team, Salesforce, Marketo, Gainsight,
Asana … the list is endless. With so many icons and alerts lighting up their
desktops (and, increasingly, phones) every day, do you really want one more
program (an analytics platform) elbowing in for attention as well?
Again,
all users want invisible, easy-to-use insights served up like the consumer
analytics they’re already used to. The essence of actionable intelligence is
the right piece of information, in front of the right person, at the right time
and place, guiding them to the best next action. No switching between programs,
hunting for the right insight, or puzzling over the right next action to take.
Extending
the abilities of any piece of workplace software by adding personalized,
actionable intelligence to it is the next wave or generation of analytics. The
only limit for how analytics could positively impact your teams is your
imagination. Savvy companies looking to augment their workforces with
actionable intelligence should choose analytics platforms with robust, flexible
APIs that allow for personalized, custom analytics inside any program their
teams use — wherever your workforce spends its time, that’s where you want to
put analytics.
Focus on outcomes over technology
If
the right software program or a top-down culture of adopting analytics was
enough to get everyone in every industry using analytics, it would have done so
by now. Countless companies have gone through lengthy product buying cycles,
rolled out fancy new analytics software, and gotten little for their efforts.
Infusing
actionable intelligence into workflows and apps and focusing on outcomes is the
solution to a problem that another standalone piece of software won’t solve.
The right analytics platform capable of infusing advanced insights from complex
data sources, augmented with AI-driven capabilities, into workflows is the key
to smarter teams making better decisions.
An
extensible framework makes all that possible, supercharging any piece of
workplace software and making users smarter without them even realizing it.
Consumer software companies are already aware of how important real-time
recommendations and actionable insights are and how much customers want them.
Now it’s time for businesses in every industry to follow suit and provide their
workforces with analytics experiences that mirror consumer ones.
The future is invisible analytics,
and the future is here.
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