The Emerging Field of Augmented Analytics

Talk of data is everywhere. Business leaders want to collect data, and there are more sources today than there ever were in the past. With all of this talk of data, you have to ask one simple question: what are we doing with the data?

There is no doubt that it has value. Organizations will go to great lengths to collect data and pay significant sums to buy it from others. With that said, data is only as valuable as the insights you can glean from it.

Extracting meaning from data has typically been the job of data scientists. The work of a data scientist can be invaluable, but it is not accessible to every business. Without these professionals, the power of data is largely left untapped for many businesses.

With augmented analytics, this is starting to change. Augmented analytics software can be used by data scientists to make them more effective, but it is also designed to bring the power of analytics to people who do not have the skills of a data scientist.

What Is Augmented Analytics?

To many, augmented analytics is the future of data and analytics. The global market for augmented analytics was valued at USD $5.1 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow to USD $25 billion by 2026. 

With augmented data analytics, machine learning and other AI tools are used to automate the processes of collecting, organizing and analyzing data. An augmented analytics platform can analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns and deliver insights without the intervention of a human data analyst. Many of these platforms can even use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to translate the findings into terms that can be understood by people without analytics expertise.

This is more than a program that takes data and displays it in a chart or graph. That can be useful, but there is no insight there. As an example, this type of visualization could show you that sales went down as compared to this time last year, but it can’t provide any insights concerning why sales went down. Using this same example, augmented analytics software can show you that sales went down over a period, but it can also take other data to provide insights to inform your teams as to why numbers may have gone down. Some systems might even be able to suggest solutions to the problem.

Many of the world’s largest organizations already use augmented analytics to make business decisions. A retail chain might use augmented analytics to forecast their inventory needs. The augmented analytics software will achieve this by analyzing historic data that not only covers consumer habits, but also a range of other data points. These systems can also account for things like seasonal changes, campaigns you might be planning to run, new product launches, changes to your marketing campaigns and issues with the weather.

The Benefits of Augmented Analytics

The benefits of augmented analytics are many. Furthermore, different organizations may use augmented data analytics for different purposes, so the benefits might depend on the applications to which it is applied.

For analytics teams, one of the key benefits is that augmented analytics can save time and make them more efficient. Augmented analytics software can take on the tasks of integrating data from a multitude of sources. This is generally tedious work that takes a lot of time when it is done manually.

The automation of analysis is the key benefit of augmented analytics. With so much data, a human team can’t possibly look at it from every angle. They have to know the insights they want, and then where to look for them. Augmented analytics can be used to find the insights you might not even know to look for. Along with that, it can approach the data from many more angles and deliver the insights in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do the work.

Augmented analytics can also put the power of data analytics at the fingertips of more people. With these platforms, you do not need to be a data analytics expert to get insights. Most of these platforms come with a user-friendly dashboard that can be used by almost anyone. If you need an answer to an analytics question or want insights into a particular issue, it is basically as simple as asking the question.

And that is the real promise of this emerging field: unlocking the power of data analytics for a wider range of businesses and individuals. This not only means that insights from analytics will be available to more businesses, but it will be accessible to more people within the organization. 

If you think that Augmented Analytics is the right choice for you or your company, contact us today!