In the article, Gartner’s senior director analyst, Melody Chien explained, “Low BI maturity severely constrains analytics leaders who are attempting to modernize BI.” She goes on to say, “It also negatively affects every part of the analytics workflow. As a result, analytics leaders can struggle to accelerate and expand the use of modern BI capabilities and new technologies.”
According to Gartner, your business is considered to have subpar BI maturity if you are still using spreadsheet-based statistics and extracting personal data. While Excel is still ideal for data scientists inquiring about a few lines of data; software such as SQL and R are recommended when analyzing data sets that include thousands of lines of data.
If your business could benefit from more strategic data analysis, Gartner recommends that a company should “develop holistic data and analytics strategies with a clear vision.” This step is especially crucial if a data analytics team takes on projects individually. This may indicate that your data team is siloed from key stakeholders in the IT, Finance, and Sales department. Gartner recommends working with the key stakeholders and developing a process that each analytics project is measured against. This will minimize the risk of inconsistency and ensures all team members are held accountable.
Best practices and essential skills in regards to data analysis is always changing. Gartner encourages businesses to be flexible and open to develop their analytics program whether that means hiring for different roles, purchasing the necessary software and hardware, or anticipating upcoming needs of the team.
Thirdly, a business must create a data governance program. The article explains that a data governance program, “support business objectives and also enable the organization to balance out the opportunities and risks in the digital environment.” While many companies have identified a data governance program as essential, few actually create one within their organization.
The last tip on growing one’s analytics maturity is to “create integrated analytics platforms that can support a broad range of uses.” The article goes on to state that many businesses turn to traditional BI tools that have limited uses. Gartner recommends that a business hoping to ramp up their analytics team use BI tools that include modern technologies. These tools could include Tableau, R programing, and Apache Spark.
Data analysis is a growing field, and businesses must stay on top of the growing trends. Analytics maturity doesn’t happen overnight, but reviewing Gartner’s article, “Organizations Have Low BI and Analytics Maturity” is a great start.
