6  analytics trends that will shape business in 2016

In its recently released Analytics Trends 2016 report, consulting firm Deloitte predicts six major trends will significantly shape business in 2016.

"Business leaders continue to face many varying challenges and opportunities, and staying ahead of these trends will have a lasting impact on how their organizations will operate in the future," says John Lucker, principal, Deloitte Consulting. "By going on the offensive with issues such as cybersecurity, organizations are making a strategic shift in the way they operate. Concurrently, the widening data scientist talent gap could be a business growth barrier. One thing is certain: effectively using analytics is essential in delivering insights that help achieve new levels of innovation and value."

1. Cybersecurity: Offense can be the best defense

Cybersecurity is no stranger to Deloitte's trends lists, It was called out in its report last year. But a shift is occurring in the market, Lucker says, citing an IDC finding that the worldwide financial services industry was projected to spend $27.4 billion on information security alone in the last year. These organizations, he says, are no longer content to take to take the traditional reactive approach to security. Instead, they are beginning to employ predictive approaches to threat intelligence and monitoring. These approaches may include automated scanning of Internet "chatter" by individuals who may intend the organization harm, or analyzing past hacks and breaches to create predictive models for tomorrow's threats.

2. Companies struggle to bridge the data talent gap

Another familiar trend this year is the ever-growing struggle to find and retain analytical talent. Lucker points to the 2015 MIT Sloan Management Review, which found that 40 percent of companies struggle with finding the talent they need.

Colleges and universities are working hard to produce data science talent, but the number of data scientists will remain limited and the competition for top talent will be fierce.

"Companies need to recognize that they need to really develop close relationships with these degree programs," Lucker says. "Creating a true courtship between companies and universities is becoming more and more important."

Additionally, Lucker notes that attracting talent is only part of the equation. Companies that can get top data science talent in the door need to think long and hard about retention.

3. Man/machine partnerships are getting stronger

IDC is projecting that businesses will spend more than $60 billion on cognitive solutions by 2025. While there have been numerous projections that artificial intelligence and cognitive solutions will eliminate large numbers of jobs, Lucker says leading businesses will use humans to add value to smart machines. After all, human talent will be required to build and implement cognitive technologies, and others will serve as a check to ensure the technologies are performing well. Still others will complement computers in roles machines can't perform well, for instance roles involving high levels of creativity or empathy.

4. The Internet of Things -- and people

People are going to reemerge as an important element in the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2016 as well, Lucker says. IoT is rapidly evolving from the realm of interesting gadgets to include tracking people as "things" to form new business models and influence behaviors. Lucker notes this innovation is taking place in both consumer-focused and business-to-business industries and will have significant implications for business models and industry.

The capability to track people and their movements means data on travel patterns and spending patterns and similar things will allow for wholly new business models. Think Uber, for instance.

5. The triumph of the scientists

With data now potentially affecting every area of business, Lucker says scientists are taking on a new stature in the business world. It should be noted that analytics aren't new; businesses have used analytics for decades. But recent advances in technology and data capabilities have given scientists and the sciences a new importance in the business world.

"Business isn't the only field notable for major advances in analytics through the years," the report says. "If anything, there may be a stronger case for the sciences leading the vanguard of analytics. Universities, research labs and other science-focused organizations have been applying and refining analytics approaches to solve some incredibly complex problems through the years, in everything from molecular biology and astrophysics to the social sciences and beyond. In many cases, they don't even use the word "analytics." For them, it's all just science."

6. The rise of the insight-driven organization

For the past several years, Deloitte and others watching this trend have referred to the "data-driven enterprise," which relies on data to drive its decision-making. Over the past year, Lucker says, we've seen organizations move from implementing or improving targeted analytics capabilities in just a few key areas to taking steps to leveraging data across the entire organization. Deloitte calls organizations that take this additional step insight-driven organizations (IDOs).

The IDO goes beyond the selective use of insights to fuel decision-making in individual parts of the business, the report says. It deploys a tightly knitted combination of strategy, people, processes and data — along with technology — to deliver insights at the point of action, every day, in every part of the organization. One example might be marrying up human resources data with production information and marketing data to determine how employees are performing across the sales side of things.

Source : cio.com