Last year, the corona epidemic created mayhem all over the world and affected all industries and businesses except data analytics or business intelligence analytics. Even this year, the pandemic is here to stay even though lockdowns and vaccinations are in place. Last year has been remarkable because many businesses turned digital owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The digitalization of businesses is a great thing to happen, to be candid. However, your business leaders should be proactive to watch out for the data analytics trends in 2021.
Though the pandemic made many businesses shut doors, you can use analytics software to understand trends and strategize accordingly. Here are the seven major data analytics trends to focus on in 2021:
1. Data analytics to become accessible to all
Today, data is not the monopoly of the IT department alone nor is data analytics. In the year 2021, businesses will employ more hard work and effort to incorporate data platforms. This would include user-friendly and interactive dashboards in an organization. Again, self-service analytics tools will grow when it comes to demand and use.
Data democratization means that information will become easily accessible to all this year. These days, businesses have started letting their staff assess and discover data at different levels right from their PCs or smartphones. With the progress of computing and technology, companies are using self-service business intelligence (BI) models. It will empower an employee to discover patterns in his or her data, find perspective, and team up with other members of a team to understand successfully the value offered by data analytics and useful insights.
Artificial intelligence or AI often drives contemporary BI platforms, and usually 100 percent automated. Moreover, data analytics in the retail industry is the latest trend that is to stay in 2021 and beyond.
When it comes to traditional BI models, they fail to provide the same agility level that modern, global businesses require. Today, data analytics and BI tools help to boost collaborative work throughout every department, whether it is IT or sales.
2. Data analytics is migrating to the cloud
Modern cloud technology is gaining traction and speedy with smarter as well as flexible options. That is why many businesses are shifting their data warehouses to the cloud platform or the hybrid option. It means using the combination of an on-premise data warehouse and the cloud.
Then, data security was one of the greatest challenges of cloud computing. That is the reason why many organizations felt reluctant to embrace cloud due to security issues. Processes like data analysis and data mining on a cloud platform are not possible if the information is encrypted. However, with the advent of Homomorphic encryption, the fundamental issue of data security is not a problem anymore. This encryption means that you can do computation jobs related to data without the need to decrypt the same.
Based on the findings of Gartner, public cloud solutions will be the requirement for 90 percent of data analytics and innovation by the year 2022. Again, cloud-oriented AI will gain traction between 2019 and 2023.
When it comes to modern cloud-oriented data warehouses, it gives you the choice to decide which info will go to the cloud and which would stay on-premise. These days, you will get uninterrupted data warehousing that lets your organization reap the maximum benefits out of data analytics. It also means that your business becomes more agile.
3. Customer personalization to place buyers in the main seat
Today, customers are in full control, whether it is healthcare or retail. More users or consumers used the web than before with the outbreak of the pandemic. It happened due to work from home rules and making enterprises go digital. When it comes to digitalization, it implies more useful data and an improved view of your consumers.
These days, data science is changing the business dynamics. In 2021 and beyond, you will witness more companies keen on providing an extremely customizable consumer experience, which means the right deal at the precise time in a buyer’s purchasing journey.
With more digitalization, it is evident that customer personalization is part of an organization’s business plan this year. You will have to meet your buyers where they are now. You need to succeed in this strategy and to do so, your brand will have to build a data-oriented customized consumer experience strategy. That is because an engaged customer is always a delighted customer.
4. Enhanced automation, AI, machine learning, and NLP
This year, data categorization and data modeling will gain more traction when it comes to automation. It will lead to more precise and actionable insights for your business.
Natural language processing or NLP has helped analysis to be extremely user-friendly by changing natural language queries into a language required to achieve the results. It will help you pull out loads of unorganized data that is accessible due to the rampant use of social networking sites, internet reviews, and things like that.
When it comes to NLP, it also helps the computer to make sense of the human language, thus understanding customer communications better and classifying the same. It implies using NLP in social media conversations to help detect emotion on a specific topic, and that too, in real-time. It helps brands to change direction on some product, halfway all through the marketing campaign.
With the advancement of NLP, you will experience a propagation of user interfaces (UIs) leveraging NLP as well as NLP-oriented analytics tools this year. With high-end AI technology, computers will better understand human language questions or queries, understand the many semantic relations, and conclusions in any query. It will help in delivering BI to the user and that too, in real-time.
It implies that your organization can employ machine learning, AI, as well as NLP to transform complicated data into actionable BI.
NLP, particularly, will result in the change in analytics results into insightful stories. It will accelerate analytics implementation in every aspect and unit of your organization to help you meet your business goals quickly.
5. Consumer data platform will keep growing
Due to more digitalization last year, the demand for customer data platforms or CDPs soared significantly. A CDP means a high-end data hub where every aspect related to data coverage, whether it is sources of data and customer info comes under the CDP. Each of your customers leaves behind some data when communicating with your brand. When consumers browse the web or communicate with businesses through online or offline channels such as websites, in-store communication, or online stores, you can monitor the footprint of the customers.
The popularity and demand for CDP will continue to increase in 2021 and beyond. Though some believe that CDP is meant for B2C companies, the truth is quite the opposite. There are many B2B firms to make the most out of CDP in 2021. You cannot avoid transacting and shopping online, implying that more data would become accessible for your organization.
When it comes to a CDP, it provides your business with an all-encompassing view of your consumers’ journey and helps in capturing their interactions with your business. It means that you can update your database with fresh information coming from multiple channels. A CDP provides a structure to your business data and matches the same with your customer profiles so that your brand can build better engagement with your targeted audience or customers.
A CDP is beneficial to your company because it helps in building a strong and loyal business relationship with your buyers. It will help you offer products or services that your customers want. Therefore, it is high time that you invest in a CDP to let you envision quick insights from your business data and that too, in real-time.
When you have a CDP in place, it will also help you when it comes to customer identity resolution as well as consumer segmentation. All of this will let your business focus more and build failsafe strategies so that you can retain your loyal and paying customers. You may even build engagement with potential buyers, who did not purchase from you.
6. Augmented analytics
Studies show that augmented analytics will value approx $18.4 billion by the year 2023. Today, many brands are using augmented analytics and heavily, this signifying that it will touch the $18.4 billion mark soon. When it comes to augmented analytics, it has the potential to improve data analytics already employed by businesses.
Augmented has made this possible by discovering an innovative way of developing, sharing, and building data analytics with the use of machine learning and AI. The companies can now automate multiple analytics including data analytics in financial services. Businesses can also automate analytics potential such as creating, building, and evaluating data models. Additionally, augmented analytics will make it simpler for you to elucidate data insights as well as ensure data interaction.
7. X analytics
Data analytics is not just information in tabular form or like numerous rows in an Excel sheet. Your business also has information in text, audio, or video format. You need to examine such data as well to stay ahead of the competition. This is how X analytics play an important role when it comes to text, audio, or video evaluation.
Final words
These data analytics trends, which are popular and much in demand will change the way many companies function. Reap the maximum benefits out of these trends to help you gain an edge over your competitors to help your business stay afloat amid the pandemic as well as in the days to come. The corona crisis has spurred the digitalization of businesses and therefore, data is more important than ever in every industry or sector.
