FEATURE : ANALYTICS
IT HAS LONG BEEN KNOWN THAT BETTER ANALYTICS- BASED REPORTS CAN HIGHLIGHT AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT AND GUIDE THE ACTIONS OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT .
Alan Eldridge , Vice President of Sales
Engineering Asia Pacific and Japan , Snowflake
of cloud data stores and sophisticated tools . Currently , one of the biggest barriers is organizational inertia which often stops it embracing new platforms and making the required changes to take full advantage of new technology . This needs to be overcome sooner rather than later .
How can companies break down data silos to deliver a greater degree of visibility ?
This can be achieved by investing in a modern and fully functional data management platform . This platform can then ingest data from multiple existing silos and create a single view on which analytics tools can work .
Taking this approach will allow an organization to gain insights that previously would not have been possible , and to take advantage of rich data from other sources .
Is the ultimate aim of analytics to create an end-to-end view of a customer ’ s experience ?
This is certainly one of the aims and assists with gaining insight into the entire customer journey . Other aims include achieving increasing operational efficiency , reducing risk and innovating faster . It also provides clearer views of what is taking place within the organization itself . This can go a long way to achieving more informed decisions and better business outcomes .
Learning tools that are on the market . When added to the overall analytics mix , these tools can help to further solve key business challenges . They certainly won ’ t remove the human dimension but rather support it . For these new tools , data health is of the utmost importance if they are to be used to support organizational decision-making processes .
ALAN ELDRIDGE , VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES ENGINEERING ASIA PACIFIC AND JAPAN , SNOWFLAKE
How can analytics provide enterprises with insights that will drive better decision-making ?
There is a well-worn cliché that , in business , data is the new oil . This is because modern companies run on data . The insights that can be provided from this data by analytics tools are many and varied and will be determined by the type of organization and the activities in which it is engaged .
What sort of information can analytics provide to enterprises that would be especially useful ?
Again , this will be determined by the particular organization involved . One of the most useful is likely to be insights into past events that can be used to guide future decisions . For example , a pizza chain can use analytics tools to analyze real-time data drawn from each outlet . This will allow changes in customer behavior to be closely monitored and enable the company to better plan everything from staff rosters to the volume of ingredients purchased .
What is the best way for enterprises to gain actionable intelligence ?
The best way is to put in place the analytics tools that can deliver the most appropriate results for your particular circumstances . These insights could be anything from shifting trends in the market to the creation of a maintenance schedule for machinery based on past performance and known faults . Such
How far can analytics help enterprises solve business challenges ?
Analytics is about providing a window into what has happened in the past . The key to solving business challenges is to extend this capability so it can provide predictions about what is likely to happen in the future .
There is growing attention being directed to the rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence and Machine
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