A new survey of business leaders found that enterprise employees will probably have to learn more about data-based decision-making for their companies.
The survey, sponsored by SAP and conducted by Wakefield Research, found that 86% of enterprise decision-makers believe that “all employees in a company will eventually need to be ‘data geeks,’ meaning they will require skills to analyze company data and make decisions based on that analysis.”
The survey found that the number of employees who already have access to company data and base decisions on it has risen from 33% to 50% — probably in no small way assisted by the fact that more and more companies are making their company data accessible via mobile application, as well as drawing data from the use of consumer mobile apps to get to know their customers better in terms of how they shop, what they buy and where they are located. More than 90% of the survey respondents said that they expect the need for data visualization tools on mobile devices to increase in the next five years.
Despite the emphasis on data and business intelligence, however, the survey found that execution so far is lacking, with 61% of survey respondents saying that their company’s data isn’t being used to its full potential — even though 95% of the company leaders said they themselves often used such data and asked their direct reports to do the same.
One in four business leaders gave their companies a below-average grade on the ability to leverage data for decision-making. Also, 31% said they didn’t use and don’t have plans to use data visualization tools in company operations. Data visualization is supposed to make assessing and applying business intelligence easier, and survey respondents estimated that they were able to see patterns, trends and correlations in their data nine hours faster by utilizing data visualization.
Despite the desire to spread the data knowledge around, data scientists were cited as the most trusted source of analysis, with 91% of respondents saying that the best analysis comes from those with special training.
“The overwhelming amount of data in business today means we’re all going to have to become more data-savvy,” said Jayne Landry, global VP and general manager of business intelligence for SAP. “Knowing what happened is no longer enough, we need to understand why it happened, what will happen next or even what the best that can happen is. And these types of insights are no longer confined to a handful of small experts in an organization — everyone within an organization should have the ability to contribute their knowledge and derive insights from data.”
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