Analytics spend expected to outstrip other software 

Australian organisations are looking to spend on analytics over the next year and a half, according to a new report. The IDC research (commissioned by Alteryx) found that 72% of organisations will increase their spend, while also finding that less than half of business decisions are currently based on analytic output.

Even fewer are maximising advanced analytics, with less than 30% of decisions informed by AI and machine learning. To help businesses maximise analytics investments, the global survey uncovered the impacts of people, data and analytics automation on ROI. 

Gap between analytics and upskilling spending hinders digital progress

According to the ‘Four ways to unlock transformative business outcomes from analytic investments’ report, 93% of organisations in Australia are not fully using the analytics skills of their employees. This is in part due to only one out of five organisations across the globe reporting commensurate investment in upskilling for analytics and data literacy. Globally, IDC further uncovered:

• Nine out of 10 respondents say that less than half of their knowledge workers are active users of analytics software other than spreadsheets.
• 63% of organisations are not using the full breadth of data types available.
• 82% of organisations indicate data access policies are only moderately effective or worse.
• Enterprise-wide analytics solutions have been deployed in less than half of the departments that need them.

Key strategies to maximise analytics investments and drive transformative business outcomes

Many business processes in today’s digital economy are still manually running on paper and outdated spreadsheets, creating a widening analytics gap. When respondents invested in a low-code/no-code analytics automation platform and followed specific strategies, IDC found organisations improved their financial, customer and operational metrics. These strategies included:

• deploying easy-to-use cloud-based or hybrid AI-infused analytics technology to support cross-functional use cases;
• breaking down data and analytics silos by emphasising enterprise-wide analytics;
• developing a data culture that aligns technology spend with upskilling on data literacy;
• ensuring alignment on analytics initiatives between IT and line of business to eliminate shadow IT.
   

“It’s no surprise that so few organisations are ahead of the curve when it comes to analytic maturity considering they leave out a key component: people,” said Dan Vesset, group vice president, Analytics and Information Management, IDC.

“What we’re seeing is that organisations that provide analytics tools that are easy to use and easy to access, while upskilling their talent, achieve more ROI from their respective analytics investment than organisations who do not.”

“As their operating business environment increases in complexity, organisations need powerful and unified, end-to-end analytics automation solutions that enable business leaders to make critical data-led decisions anytime, anywhere,” said Gari Johnson, senior vice president of Asia Pacific and Japan, Alteryx.

“Analytics automation provides the organisational agility needed to advance digitally and empower the workforce across all levels to turn data into actionable insights.”

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