Sound decisions require timely access to good data. Despite a large increase in analytical activity in most organisations, too many ignore the potential of insight derived from multiple areas of the business and still make decisions largely in a vacuum. New research by Aberdeen Group suggests one of the biggest challenges companies are struggling with, in terms of managing organisational data, is the ability to bring together disparate systems to provide a consolidated view of performance as the basis for effective decision making.
Systems integration - a key issue
Finding wells of useable information is not particularly complicated. Whether or not they have a big data strategy in place, every organisation has vast quantities of information pouring in from a number of sources. In fact, 58 per cent of businesses use at least eight channels to capture customer data alone, according to Aberdeen Group in its new report, Getting Ahead In Customer Analytics. Factor in the Internet Of Things (IoT), which has opened up a whole new world of data for manufacturers and service organisations with data from remotely connected assets and many other systems, and it is no surprise that Aberdeen found that data integration is widely cited by CIOs as a significant limitation of many current business intelligence software platforms.
To achieve data-driven possibilities, a foundation is required that allows you to drive analysis of all your data. It could come from any data source - on-premise or in the cloud, internal or external – without restriction or limitation to the design of your data model. After all, insights come from truly understanding the data from all angles. However, too many enterprises find themselves hostage to their enterprise applications stack, which prevents them from getting to their data in a simple and meaningful way.
According to IDC, the average worker spends almost 10 hours each week searching for information. Fortunately, new advancements in in-memory data analytics and visualisation tools can play a significant role in improving the efficiency of data-related tasks.
Bringing data together with Qlik
QlikView and Qlik Sense, as part of the Qlik analytics platform, form an integrated business intelligence toolset, which encompasses an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) layer, patented in-memory analytics engine and intuitive user interface - all working together to optimise systems integration, data storage and presentation of data. This toolset offers robust data integration and allows organisations to cleanse, transform, and unify multiple disparate data sources without requiring external tools or data repositories. Qlik has prebuilt certified connectors so you can connect to and combine virtually any data source, including spreadsheets, databases, operational systems, ERP, and web sources. And with Direct Discovery, resident big data sources such as Hadoop, Teradata, and Cloudera can be integrated without requiring data to be loaded into memory. The Qlik analytics platform lets users connect to these in a single application, providing comprehensive views without compromising performance.
This provides easy access to, and analysis of, your business data - even support for thousands of users or billions of records, compressing data by up to ten times for fast query response times. Alongside a highly interactive, associative experience in which users can freely navigate through data with little to no constraint in their analysis path. With Qlik, there's no longer any need to be a technical whiz.
While the amount and sources of information will continue to increase for organisations, there is no reason to be overwhelmed. Integrating multiple, disparate business and financial systems and providing a consolidated view of performance for those that need it within the business is achievable; you just need the right BI tool.
