Big Data & Augmented Analytics – The New Megatrend Set To Disrupt The Business World?

Today we navigate our way across cities, pull up electronic tickets, purchase items, monitor our health and, of course, stay connected with friends and family on our smartphones. It’s one of those innovations that later makes us think, just how did I ever function without it?

Much like smartphones revolutionized our personal lives, augmented analytics is on the cusp of becoming the business world’s next big evolution.

Augmented analytics was identified by Gartner as the number 1 top trend for data and analytics technology in 2019 and market leaders are already starting to invest in this burgeoning industry. SAP recently acquired augmented people analytics company Qualtrics for $8 billion, shelling out a price equivalent to over 20x the company’s current revenue. A newcomer to the game, Denver based startup Nodin raised $5 million in funding this past March, a month before even launching its platform.

In fact, the global market for augmented analytics is forecasted to reach $29.86 billion by 2025.

But just what is augmented analytics and what makes it such a hot new trend?

Data Or Die

Companies are using data science to build better products and reach their target audiences. In today’s fast-paced business world, data-driven insights are no longer a nice to have, they’re a necessity to stay competitive and on top of market volatility.

Major players from Booking.com to PepsiCo are relying on teams of data analysts to collect, clean and analyze the surge of data now being generated. Small to medium businesses are also leveraging their data to gain a competitive advantage in a sea of new competitors popping up every day.

The problem is that data analysts are not only scarce in number, they’re also extremely expensive, especially for SMBs.

Even for companies that do have data scientists on board, the sheer volume of the data we’re now collecting through various platforms and tools means that they actually spend more of their time on activities like data preparation and visualization, leaving less time for actual analysis.

Augmented analytics harnesses the power of  Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to cut out the arduous tasks of processing, aggregating and visualizing data. You may think, just how significant automating these tasks for businesses can be? Here are 3 major ways this service will disrupt the business world:

#1 Quicker Access To Data

We’re now in a race to see who can make faster better business decisions. Our businesses are like engines that need data to fuel growth. Automating part of this process through augmented analytics allows us to fuel our engines at an accelerated rate.

Gartner believes that by 2020 over 40% of data science tasks will be automated. This will allow data scientists to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on strategic analysis and decision-making.

Not only does it take the manual labor out of their job, but it also does it faster and eliminates the potential for human error.

#2 Brings Together The Whole Picture

At the moment, most company’s data lives on several different platforms. Not only is this inefficient, but it also blocks businesses from making informed decisions. We shouldn’t be looking at how each part of the engine works separately but how it all works together.

Having data points integrated into a rapid reporting system allows you to track the entire customer journey on one platform, from acquisition-related metrics to retention focused insights. It also allows for better cohesion and collaboration across the organization. It’s not just ‘how is my marketing team doing on their KPIs?’, but how are the marketing team’s results impacting sales and customer success?

#3 Democratizes Data Analytics

Meanwhile, for smaller companies that don’t have the means to hire a team of data scientists (currently the average salary is $90,000), augmented analytics will make data-driven insights accessible to the masses.

According to Gartner, through 2020 the number of citizen data scientists will grow five times faster than professional data scientists. With augmented analytics, everyone from executives to marketers will have the power to make data-driven decisions, without having to rely on data science professionals to provide the information they need.

This opens doors for SMBs to accelerate their growth at an exponential rate across departments.

Much like smartphones have become the tool we can’t imagine our lives without, augmented analytics will set a new standard for business growth. Those who start to leverage this technology early on will reap the benefits that faster, aggregated and accessible data can bring.

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