Every company today relies on data to boost employee satisfaction, streamline operations, optimize the supply chain, understand customer behavior, enable predictive maintenance, and more. The power of data is especially evident in the post-pandemic era, where organizations are still struggling to adapt to changing requirements, fluctuating economic trends, and a volatile business environment. With long-term changes on the horizon, Business Intelligence is helping businesses cope with evolving disruptions, empowering them to strengthen their business models while also equipping them for possible future crises.
Modern BI tools open a world of opportunities for organizations to unearth new insights, efficiencies, and innovations, and become more proactive in the way they carry out their day-to-day operations. The many capabilities of these tools are driving the growth of the BI market, expected to be worth $43.03 billion by 2028.
2023 Business Intelligence Trends
Like every other technology, BI trends continue to evolve. From the early days when BI was confined to spreadsheets bursting with numbers; today, the technology allows for insightful visualization and immediate action. However, to realize the real value of BI, it is important to stay abreast with the latest trends, understand if, and how they can be incorporated, and have a roadmap in place to embrace the technology across the business. Here’s looking at 6 BI trends to watch in 2023:
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI and BI, although both equally transformative, have always been used separately. But not any longer. In 2023, organizations will increasingly combine the two technologies to uncover deeper insights and enable better decisions. The combination of AI and BI will enable them to rapidly identify and automate as many business and IT processes as possible while ensuring high levels of scalability and agility – thus analyzing large datasets with minimal human intervention. Such capabilities will not only reduce the stress on humans; they will also quicken the data analysis process while making it more efficient and error-free.
2. Real-Time and Predictive Analytics
In the coming year, businesses will use a combination of predictive and real-time analytics to analyze data as and when it is generated. This two-pronged approach will allow organizations to be prepared for unwarranted threats beforehand and modify reactions according to situations in real-time. This will allow them to optimize their current operations and enable innovation by uncovering better insights, implementing better processes, and identifying new avenues for business growth.
3. Data Security
As regulations across data privacy and security become increasingly stringent, data security will continue to be a raging BI trend in 2023. The coming year will see organizations driving sustained efforts toward classifying data and knowing where it is coming from, who has access to it, how it is being used, and how long it can be stored. This trend will be driven by the number and complexity of data sources, as well as the numerous data types that need to be supported – especially as analytics initiatives grow exponentially. To ensure data security, businesses will be required to drive efforts in building a sound data governance strategy to enable a healthy balance between data consistency and transparency. This will, in turn, set the foundation for accurate, ethical, and evidence-based decision-making, while also ensuring privacy and confidentiality and preventing unauthorized use.
4. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Business intelligence companies are revolutionizing their analytical processes with NLP. One of the most powerful branches of AI, NLP allows computers and machines to interpret and understand human language in both spoken and written formats. Although the technology is already in use in the form of voice assistants and autocomplete texts on our phones, in 2023, companies will increasingly use NLP in their BI projects to manage the significant amounts of unstructured text data they collect from various sources, such as emails, social media, and surveys.
5. Data Democratization
A lot of the new BI technology being developed in 2023 is intended to help non-exclusive staff understand the data they are working with. This is where data democratization is getting introduced as an alternative to traditional data analytics operations. Data democratization will make business data accessible to all levels of the organization, not just to analytics teams and senior management. By giving employees the tools they need to comprehend the data they are accessing, enough to be able to influence decisions and increase business opportunities, data democratization will make it easier to uncover hidden business insights as more employees from varying areas of expertise have access to data.
6. Collaborative BI
Collaborative BI involves the combination of BI and other technological tools which facilitate and streamline data-driven decisions. With collaborative BI, sharing data and reporting becomes easier, thus enabling effective decision-making. Collaborative BI has resulted in people being involved in the decision-making process and are no longer required to come to conclusions on an individual basis. In 2023, the technology will promote collective problem-solving, and given the benefits BI offers to a company’s management, it will continue to grow in popularity in 2023.
Staying on Top of Today’s Business Intelligence Trends
Companies who want to stay on the right side of digital disruption must move fast and get serious about their data and analytics efforts. While a majority of data analysis happening today is based on historical data, the focus is rapidly shifting towards forward-looking, automated, and real-time decision-making. In 2023, the BI market is going to be defined by trends across AI, real-time analytics, data security, NLP, data democratization, and collaborative BI. Organizations that embrace these trends will be the ones to strengthen their foothold in tomorrow’s competitive and dynamic business environment.
