Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 27 | Page 34

FEATURE: BUSINESS ANALYTICS ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Neil Herbert, Director: Business Analytics at SAP Africa, says that analytics leads the way to intelligent enterprises. T he success of any modern enterprise can arguably be ascribed to its ability to make informed, accurate decisions regarding changing business paradigms in real time. From the shop floor to the top floor, teams are increasingly relying on the insights delivered by advanced analytics solutions to power their decision-making and ensure they effectively navigate the complexities of doing business in this exponential age. Advances in technology enable enterprises to blur the lines between formerly siloed business and IT users. Data, the fuel that drives every intelligent modern enterprise, can now be consolidated, processed and mined for insights through a combination of Business Intelligence (BI), planning and predictive analytics all built on a powerful analytics platform. This provides all business decision-makers with access to real-time accurate business insights that drive performance, improve operations, boost revenue and powers high-performance teams for competitive advantage. And as processes increasingly migrate to cloud environments, enterprises are gaining unprecedented agility and flexibility in how these insights are gathered, processed, delivered and consumed. The irreplaceable value of accurate insights Enterprises typically rely on Business Intelligence solutions to eliminate guesswork and improve the accuracy of their decision-making processes. According to a Forrester Consulting and SAP study, 92% of companies with mature data, analytics and BI practices have seen a revenue growth of 15% or more over the past three years. More than 80% of global survey respondents found that a hybrid analytics approach – one that combines on-premise data and technology with cloud capabilities – is an effective first step to enhancing the effectiveness of the organisation’s overall BI and analytics capabilities. Global organisations are employing the power of analytics to drive improvements in every business function – even ones that were traditionally slow to apply data-driven insights and capabilities. This unlocks immense productivity gains and improved customer experience benefits across the enterprise value chain. European start-up Sablono has developed a web and mobile application that manages, documents, and oversees complex construction and delivery management processes that gives project managers access to real-time information for the first time. By ensuring detailed construction sequences are kept on schedule, construction companies can gain immense time and cost savings – and enjoy a far happier customer base. Singapore-based SaaS provider In Mind Cloud has developed a solution for the Analytics leads way to ‘intelligent enterprises’ 34 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com