W H I T E P A P E R

Closing the Gap Between Data Analysis and Decision Makers

The days of not collecting data as a company are over. Long over. The InternationalData Corporation estimates that by 2020, the digital universe will encompass 44 trilliongigabytes, a tenfold increase from 2013. The enterprise ecosystem is not only collecting data in every area of an organization, but businesses are aggregating this information for better market understanding and process streamlining.

We’ve already hit the era of “every business decision must be driven by data.” Departments that previously operated on premonition, status quo, or frameworks of the past must now justify their forward-looking strategy with supporting metrics. Historical information about successes and failures are necessary for determining direction of action, but analysis and insight of data as it happens has become the competitive advantage of successfulorganizations.

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The data analyst, or any of the many variations of title given to this role, has become one of the most valuable positions in providing this insight across the enterprise. This role not only collects and investigates business data, but often transforms this information intovisualizations and dashboards that are intended to make trends in results easier to spot and digest. Often, these dashboards are constructed by a group of data experts for viewing by groups who may not be as knowledgeable about drilling down into visualizations andextracting the correct takeaways that influence their business decisions. Unfortunately, this ends up forcing these analysts to explain dashboards (which in an ideal world, wouldn’t need any explanation) via in-person presentations, written reports, phone meetings, or videowalkthroughs.

The Most Valuable Person in BI

Introduction

Traditional Ways Analysts Are Forced to Manually Explain Insights

In-PersonPresentations

HandwrittenReports

Phone CallFollow-Ups

VideoWalkthroughs

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Additionally, data analysis is often confined to separate pockets of an organization. Not all departments have a team of expert data analysts on standby who can decipher massive data sets and then turn these insights into understandable reports on command. Even ifthey do, writing manual reports highlighting key insights and providing recommendations for action steps is tedious and can easily become retroactive in nature. With a perfect storm of maxed out analysts and lack of understanding in dashboard viewers, underutilization of an organization’s data leaves the most valuable resource an enterprise has virtually untapped.

Too often, information is collected, assessed, and then delivered to decision-makers, only to lay dormant for too long, unused completely, or even worse—misinterpreted and acted upon incorrectly. Retroactive analytics reporting is misaligned with modern BI platforms and the top analytics tools, which champion the necessity for real-time insight on businessoperations for accurate decision-making. The future of business will rely on real-time data analysis and prescriptive insight that results in immediate action—across all areas of anenterprise.

Underutilization of Data

How do we close the gap between the skills and data understanding of the expertanalyst and the pressed-for-time, strategy-focused executive?

Pair the valuable data expertise of your human assets with the right technology that helps them convey and deliver insights to all areas or your organization. In other words, eliminate delay in knowledge sharing and data understanding by giving your analysts the tools they need to automate and scale their insight throughout the enterprise.

Make additions to the data visualization and dashboard platforms your organization already licenses. When presented to the perfect audience, visualizations may speak for themselves. However, leaving room for doubt and misinterpretation among a broader audience with varying levels of data expertise diminishes the analyst’s hard work and harms the overall business. Analysts should be given all the tools to create evidence-based, positive change in an enterprise. A way for them to focus more time and effort on the heavy-lifting analysis component of their job is to reduce time spent on the later stages of their work: translating the complex into simple, concise action steps for non-data experts.

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Advancements in areas like Natural Language Generation (NLG) allow analysts to automate analysis presented in natural language for their dashboards, going so far as to break down the same dashboard in written format by viewer role.

With NLG, analysts can use the data across a dashboard and their own expertise to set up conditional logic that creates written analysis. It’s a process similar to the way analysts transform data into the visualizations within a dashboard. NLG solutions can also enable real-time summaries, that update as viewers explore and drill down in a dashboard, without constant manual intervention.

Meet them where they live by delivering written reports via email or otherpreferred messaging system. That’s the beauty of written analysis: it can be deliveredvirtually anywhere, regardless of mobile, desktop, or other platform OS differences.

Natural Language Generation

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Automated Insights® Analysis

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NLG delivers role-based insights that are relevant to org structures, job functions, and individual goals.

So what about the executives who have and will never log into one of these datavisualization platforms?

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In bridging the gap between data experts and busy, decision-making executives, presenting analysis in written format can be a game-changer. A picture is worth a thousand words—in front of the right audience. Organizations that will stay ahead of the competition are those that arm their analysts with the tools they need to present information and insight that speaks to the audience at hand.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Resources1. IDC: Analyze the Future https://www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/2014iview/executive-summary.htm

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About Automated InsightsAutomated Insights (Ai) is the creator of Wordsmith, the world’s first self-service natural language generation platform for the enterprise. Automated Insights empowers organizations to generate human-sounding narratives from data, making it easy to produce real-time, written analytics, personalized reports, and stories at scale. The Wordsmith platform is utilized by companies and partners, including the Associated Press, Cisco, MicroStrategy, NVIDIA, Tableau, TIBCO, and Qlik, in over 50 data-driven industries, such as business intelligence, financial services, ecommerce, sports and entertainment, and media. AutomatedInsights.com