Trusted Analytics Platform For A Business

Trusted analytics platform has become an essential tool in the business data-driven world. It includes tools that are used for organizing the business data to provide decision-making, competitive advantages, and optimize the business operations. They are mainly equipped with technologies and methodologies for transforming raw business information into actionable and informed business insights. It enhances effective and strategic decision-making processes and increases the business’s profit and growth. Read the article below to learn more about the benefits, its significance in businesses, key components, best practices, and popular data analytics platforms available in the industry.

Significance Of Data Analytics Platforms

Trusted analytics platforms are used by various businesses for collecting, storing, organizing, analyzing, and deriving desirable date pattern results from the raw business data/information. Every business in the world has data for storage and analysis purposes. However, how these data can be used for effective business growth depends on the action taken on these data. This is where these data analytics platforms come into the picture.
Most recent research in the business industry has shown that there is a significant increase in the productivity, reduced expenditures, and profit of the businesses that are making use of these analytics platforms. The research has also specified that such businesses were able to attract and retain more potential customers with the help of such analytics platforms.
Analytics platform enables businesses to forecast their future and make effective informed decisions regarding what to implement and how to implement it. It will in turn aid the business growth, profitability, and sustainability. With effective data integration, processing, and analysis, these analytics platforms can provide a strategic view of your business performance and industry trends.
Such analytics platforms will also drive innovation, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The significance of these platforms is well-established with the advantages that a business can incur from them.
These platforms have very friendly platforms with tools and technologies for transforming raw data into visual actionable business insights. The businesses make use of these results to share with the stakeholders and other investors to maintain transparency and credibility and ensure every member of the business is well-informed about the business performance.

Key Components In A Trusted Analytics Platform

Various components of different tools and techniques are included in these analytics platforms. Together they perform efficiently to generate better results for creative and informed business decisions. Major components of the trusted analytics platform include:

Data Collection and Integration

There are a lot of diverse business data available. An effective platform will collect these data from a variety of sources like external APIs (Application Program Interface), internal databases, IoT (Internet of Things) devices, social media, and many others. These collected data are integrated using several tools like ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load) that enable efficient transformation of diverse data into a data repository.

Data Storage and Management

Data warehousing is the system used for the efficient storage of integrated raw data. The structured and integrated data is usually stored in data warehouses that provide well-organized and scalable data storage solutions. In the case of storage for semi-structured and unstructured data, the data lakes are used which provides flexible data storage options and allows data to be stored in its own raw form.

Data Processing

This component deals with the data processing capabilities of the analytics platform. Batch processing involves the process of handling large amounts of data at scheduled intervals. Batch processing is very ideal for periodic data reporting and analysis. The system of real-time data processing provides intermediate analysis and decision-making support that is essential for time-sensitive business applications.

Data Analytics

A variety of advanced data analysis tools and techniques are available like descriptive data analytics, predictive data analytics, and prescriptive data analytics. Descriptive data analytics allows the summary of historical data for understanding the past performance of businesses with the help of reports and dashboards. Predictive analytics make use of machine learning and statistical models for forecasting future business/market trends and outcomes based on the given historical data. Prescriptive data analytics provides analysis based on the data to help organizations determine the best course of action.

Visualization

Data visualization is the process of offering the analyzed data results in a presentable and easy-to-understand form. Interactive dashboards are used for this purpose, which allows a customizable interface for data exploration and discovering data insights. This platform also used various types of reports and charts to provide a visual representation of the analyzed data. It interprets complex information into a more understandable and accessible form.

Governance and Visualization

It is the most essential process in a trusted analytics platform. The process of ensuring data security is always a high priority in the world of business. Ensuring high-level data protection with the help of different access controls, encryption, and usual security measures is included in this process. Data governance includes the generation of procedures and policies regarding data management to ensure better data quality, regulatory compliance, and consistency.

Benefits Of Data Analytics Platform

Improved Decision-Making – Analytics platforms offer timely, accurate, and effective insights for business organizations to make well-informed decisions. Through the analysis of large volumes of data from a variety of sources, these platforms can identify data patterns, market trends, and relations between the data from implementing strategic planning and business operational improvements. These benefits of a data-driven platform ensure that the derived decisions are backed up by enough evidence rather than just intuitions. This will help in reducing business risks and increase the success probability.
Operational Efficiency – By automating processes like data collection, analysis, and processing, these analytics platforms reduce the significant amount of time and effort needed for data management. This process of automation also allows the employees to focus on other valued business tasks and initiatives, instead of sticking to the time-consuming manually performed data management activities. In addition to all these benefits, it also enhances productivity, minimizes the errors in a business, and leads to more operational efficiency.
Competitive Advantage – Businesses that make use of trusted analytics platforms will benefit from effective competitive advantages in the market. They can react promptly to market fluctuations and opportunities with the help of these analytics platforms. Predictive analytics is used for forecasting future industry trends and preparing businesses according to market demands. This system allows businesses to stay ahead of the competition in the market and capture new opportunities compared to their competitors.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction – Analysing and understanding target customer’s preferences and behaviors is a very important element that drives the success of a business. These analytics platforms will analyze the customer data to evaluate their buying patterns, feedback, and preferences. These analyzed results will allow the companies to personalize their marketing strategies, improve their customer services, and develop new products/services to meet their customer’s requirements. This will finally help them in achieving enhanced customer satisfaction.
Cost Reduction – Trusted analytics platforms are able to identify the business areas for cost reduction. They analyze the operational data involved in an organization. It will allow businesses to optimize their resource allocation, improve supply chain management, and thereby reduce the potential waste of resources. These types of cost-reduction measures will also improve the overall business performance and increase the profitability of the organization.
Enhanced Innovation – We have already discussed the benefits provided by analytics platforms like deriving insights about market trends, enhancing operational performance, and improving customer experience. Besides these benefits, another important one is the enhancement of innovation in this sector. Companies use these innovative insights to develop new products/services and models to meet the changing market demands. Advanced analytics techniques like artificial intelligence and machine learning will allow companies to dive deeper into the hidden business opportunities and optimization of complex business processes.
Risk Management and Regulatory Compliance – These platforms also help businesses to comply with the regulations and industry standards with proper data integrity and accuracy. It will perform continuous monitoring and report efficiently on the activities related to compliance. Moreover, analytics platforms will also identify the potential risks and challenges in an organization. It will also the businesses to implement appropriate risk management strategies and mitigate the potential risks. This will also enhance the business data security.
Data-Driven Culture – A data-driven culture is followed by most businesses in today’s world. The employees working in an organization will also feel confident in presenting business insights with the help of data-driven shreds of evidence. This type of cultural change in most organizations has led to more consistent and strategic decision-making. It is also evident that it has enhanced the overall business performance, growth, and stability.

Choosing A Data Analytics Platform

- Identify your goals – The first step is determining the business problems or requirements you are intending to address or solve using these analytics platforms. Identifying your objectives will make the selection process much easier and ensure whether the platform you are choosing will meet your requirements or not. Also determine if you require predictive, descriptive, or prescriptive analytics or combined ones. Selecting a platform that has proper analytical capabilities is also important.

Data integration capabilities – While choosing a platform, make sure that it can integrate data from multiple sources like internal databases, IoT devices, third-party applications, and cloud services. Also, look for powerful ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) ability in a platform to ensure efficient data transformation and integration.

Scalability and performance – Make sure to select an analytics platform that will scale with your particular business data requirements. For better scalability and flexibility, you can consider cloud-based solutions. The performance of the platform must also be taken into consideration. Always evaluate the analytics platform’s capability to handle large amounts of data and the efficient performance of complex analyses.

Accessibility and user-friendliness – An efficient platform should be accessible to all relevant users like stakeholders and even non-technical users. It must have customizable reports and dashboards. It should have a user-friendly interface with minimal training requirements. Such platforms are most widely used by the organizations.

Advanced analytics abilities – Choose the analytics platforms that make use of advanced methodologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to dive deep into large volumes of data and derive insights for business purposes. If your business has a requirement for real-time immediate derivation of data insights, then you must choose the platform that supports real-time data analysis and processing.

Data security and governance – This is an important feature of a data analytics platform. Ensure the platform’s security measures and features like access control, security standards, and data encryption before choosing them. This will help you to secure your sensitive business data. The platform must also support strong data governance policies to ensure data consistency, regulatory compliance, and data quality.

Vendor support community – Make sure the platform has a proper customer service support system like responses, availability, and expertise in the sector. Also make use of the user community for getting additional support like user groups, knowledge bases, and forums for increasing the potential of the platform.

Flexibility and customization – Make sure that the platform you chase is flexible i.e. it can be integrated with your existing business tools and technologies like your company’s ERP software, CRM system, or other related applications. Customization is one of the desirable qualities that business professionals will look into. Select a platform that will enable you to customize to meet your business requirements and objectives.

Product cost and return on investment (ROI) – Consider the total cost for the platform including implementation costs, maintenance costs, and licensing fees. Also, calculate the return on investment by considering the platform’s efficiency and profit generation contributions to the organization.

Free trials – Some platforms are providing free trials or demo versions. Consider taking advantage of these free trials and testing the platform’s usability, user-friendliness, and features. You can also conduct a proof of concept to know if the chosen platform will meet your business requirements in a real-world situation.

FAQs-

1. What Are The Popular Data Analytics Platforms?

Some of the popular trusted analytics platforms used by organizations across the globe are:

Microsoft Power BI – It is suitable for all types of organizations and it has key features like artificial intelligence insights, extensive data connectors, data visualization, real-time data access, and integration with Microsoft products like Azure and Excel.

Tableau – This platform is widely used for business intelligence purposes that require interactive visualizations. Its key features include data blending, real-time analytics, strong community, customer support, interactive dashboards, and support for multiple data sources.

Qlik Sense – This platform includes associative data models, self-service data discovery, data integration, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, and interactive dashboards. Qlik Sense is suitable for businesses that require flexible and intuitive solutions to support emergency queries and analyses.

Google Data Studio – It has key features like easy integration with Google products (like Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Sheets), data visualization, easy sharing, and real-time collaboration. It is used among small to medium businesses, firms that already use Google products and digital marketing analytics-related firms.

SAS Analytics – It is famous among businesses that require statistical analysis like finance, government, and healthcare. Their key features include advanced statistical analytics, predictive modeling, powerful data management, data visualization, and data mining.

IBM Cognos Analytics – It is suitable for larger organizations that require end-to-end analytics solutions using artificial intelligence capabilities. Its features include artificial intelligence-infused analytics, integration with other data sources, automated data preparation, data exploration, and interactive dashboards.

2. Will The Trusted Analytics Platforms Be Able To Handle Real-Time Data?

Yes, many of these popular analytics platforms are designed to support real-time data processing. It will allow the organizations to analyze the data as soon as they are collected and evaluate them to make quick real-time decisions based on the dynamic information.

3. Will Non-Technical Users Be Able To Use Analytics Platform?

Most of the analytics platforms are designed to be very user-friendly to support even non-technical users. It has drag-and-drop functionality and user-friendly interfaces for making easy reports and analyzing data, and dashboards without the need for any technical expertise.

4. What Are The Advantages Of Cloud-Based Trusted Analytics Platforms?

Cloud-based analytics platforms provide a variety of advantages in the real-world business economy. These types of analytics platforms offer flexibility, scalability, easy accessibility from anywhere around the globe, regular and instant updates, and reduced infrastructure costs. Besides these benefits, another major advantage of the cloud-based analytics platform is the enhanced security measures while compared to the traditional static on-premise solutions.

5. How Much Cost Is Associated With The Implementation Of A Trusted Analytics Platform?

Most of the companies spent about 2% to 6% of their total expenses for the implementation of the analytics platform. The costs associated with the implementation of an analytics platform vary for different platforms. Analytics platform’s costs will vary depending on the type of platform, deployment platform model (cloud-based or on-premise), licensing fees, scale of implementation, and other additional features. When considering the costs associated with the implementation of analytics platforms, you must also consider the total cost of ownership like maintenance costs, training expenses, and setup costs.

Conclusion

In short, it is evident that the data analytics platform has a greater impact on businesses in the modern world. Their benefits include data protection, risk management, enhanced decision-making strategies backed by data-driven evidence, improved customer satisfaction, compliance with regulatory standards, enhanced business performance, cost reduction, improved operational efficiency, and competitive advantage in the market. If a business benefits from these much variety of advantages using this analytics platform, you can understand its importance in this fast and dynamic world. Understanding the system and implementing a trusted analytics platform is essential for the success, growth, and stability of your business.