Dimensional Insight recently sponsored the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Frankfurt, Germany. The two-day event provided dozens of educational sessions from Gartner analysts and attracted 750 business intelligence and analytics leaders from around the world.
Tweet: Highlights from the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Frankfurt
What did these thought leaders say about BI today and where analytics is headed? Here are a few big takeaways.
Integrating data and analytics into everything
In their opening keynote, Gartner analysts Gareth Herschel and Rita Sallam predicted that data and analytics will have a bigger impact in the next 20 years than the internet had in the past 20 years! That is quite a bold statement and it underscores not only the importance of analytics today, but also its dominance in the future. For example, they believe that artificial intelligence will have a huge impact in the field of healthcare analytics in the years to come.
Analytics moving from IT to business function
Several Gartner analysts discussed how analytics is becoming more of a business function rather than an IT function. They emphasized the need to better enable business users.
From Dimensional Insight’s perspective, as we think about pushing data and analytics out to the masses, it is important for businesses to maximize their resources. This means companies must:
- Reduce the need for IT involvement in analytics, and instead better capture the knowledge and expertise of subject matter experts.
- Enable business users so they better understand the data and measure definitions in order to derive the most meaningful insights from them.
In addition, analytics systems must evolve so they are more “proactive” and alert users to underlying data that is causing the greatest impact, thereby minimizing time involved in analysis.
Becoming more outcomes-driven
Many of the summit’s discussions focused on how analytics can become more outcomes-driven. Clearly, as business intelligence becomes more ubiquitous, it also must tie in to business functions more directly and make a more measurable impact.
Here, data governance is essential. For data to be useful, users must trust they are looking at the same information in the same way as others across the enterprise. In addition, it’s key that users collaborate to create measures and definitions. When users take part in creating the definitions, they are much more likely to be invested in and trust the data.
Tackling these issues with Measure Factory
Here at Dimensional Insight, we recently announced Measure Factory, an add-on to Diver Platform. Measure Factory is a business rules engine that automates data governance to power financial, operational, and clinical consistency among team members, ensuring everyone is working with the same “single version of the truth.”
Whistl, the UK’s second largest mail company, was one of our initial Measure Factory customers and a presenter at the summit. Whistl leaders described how Measure Factory helped the company innovate its technology operations – and the postal industry. They specifically mentioned how Measure Factory helped them gain more consistent and trustworthy data, and how its users are benefiting from the collaboration embedded in the product.
(L-R) Thomas van Praag of Dimensional Insight, Steven Dijkman and Lieneke Happel of Whistl present at the summit
Dimensional Insight at the summit
Dimensional Insight was one of the summit’s Premier sponsors, and we enjoyed having the chance to speak with many attendees about their BI and analytics challenges. We also enjoyed the evening networking event, which featured a wide selection of food, drinks, and entertainment (including our magician, Felix Gauger – you can watch some of his magic below!).
All in all, conversations with visitors to Dimensional Insight’s booth reaffirmed that our approach to business intelligence and analytics is on the right track and will support our customers now and for many years into the future.
For more information on Dimensional Insight’s products, please visit the following pages:
Kathy started her career in television news writing and producing. She then worked at a public relations agency and as a freelance writer before joining Dimensional Insight in 2013.
Kathy has presented at several events in both healthcare and wine & spirits, including the Healthcare Innovation Summit, the Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (HITMC), and the WSWA Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) Conference. Kathy is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and a member of Women of the Vine & Spirits.
She is also host of the Smarter Healthcare Podcast (www.smarthcpodcast.com) and is a member of the Forbes Communications Council.
Kathy holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Boston University.
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