In July, Qlik introduced Qlik Answers™, a GenAI-powered knowledge assistant specifically designed to help organisations extract valuable insights from unstructured data. In today’s fast-paced world of data analytics, the challenge often lies in unlocking the value hidden within unstructured data sources like reports, PDFs and other document formats.
Let’s explore what Qlik Answers offers, how it works, and why it's becoming an important tool for organisations that need to make sense of their unstructured data.
What is Qlik Answers?
Qlik Answers is an AI-powered assistant that focuses on unstructured data. Unlike Qlik’s other AI tools, which are tailored for structured datasets, Qlik Answers is specifically designed to work with unstructured content, transforming it into meaningful insights.
By applying natural language processing and machine learning, Qlik Answers allows users to ask questions in everyday language and receive precise, actionable information drawn from a predefined set of documents. This feature makes Qlik Answers an intuitive and accessible solution for users who need to find specific information quickly.
How does Qlik Answers work?
Qlik Answers leverages Generative AI to understand and process queries - it reads a defined set of documents and generates responses based on that data. Here’s how it works:
- Ask a question: Users can ask questions in plain language, such as “What were the key findings in the annual report?” or “What is the main conclusion of this financial document?”
- AI-powered insights: Qlik Answers uses its AI engine to read and interpret unstructured data sources, it then generates responses, whether a summary, key point, or other relevant information based on the content.
- Immediate results: The results are provided in real-time, enabling users to quickly grasp insights and make informed decisions.
- Follow-up queries: Users can refine their queries or ask follow-up questions to explore further, with Qlik Answers providing deeper insights as needed.
Why Qlik Answers is a game-changer for unstructured data
- Simplified access to information: Unstructured data, often scattered across various documents, can be difficult and time-consuming to analyse. Qlik Answers simplifies this process by allowing users to query documents directly in plain language.
- Efficiency in document review: Instead of manually combing through lengthy reports or documents, users can ask Qlik Answers to find the specific information they need. This saves valuable time and enables faster decision-making.
- Enhanced knowledge sharing: By enabling easy access to critical insights, Qlik Answers helps improve collaboration across teams. Documents that were once siloed can now be queried for valuable insights, contributing to more informed, data-driven decisions.
Key benefits of Qlik Answers:
- Efficiency in information retrieval: Instead of spending hours combing through reports, Qlik Answers allows users to quickly locate specific information by simply asking a question. This streamlines workflows and boosts productivity, especially in document-heavy environments like finance, legal and research.
- Simplified access to insights: By enabling conversational querying, Qlik Answers makes it easier for users to extract relevant information from complex documents. This helps teams make faster, more informed decisions based on the insights hidden within their unstructured data.
- Enhanced decision support: While Qlik Answers doesn’t generate charts or structured analytics, it provides valuable context by pulling key information from the documents it analyses. This gives users the ability to support decision-making processes with data that might otherwise be overlooked.
- Quick and easy deployment: Qlik Answers offers a straightforward, ready-to-use solution that minimises deployment time and complexity.
- Full transparency: Delivers results with explainability, linking responses directly to their original document sources to ensure transparency and trust.
- Efficiency boost: Supports real-time document analysis, helping users access relevant information quickly and enabling faster decision-making
Real-world applications of Qlik Answers
Qlik Answers is particularly useful for industries or functions that rely on large amounts of document-based information. Here are a few potential applications:
- Legal and compliance: Legal teams can quickly retrieve key clauses, precedents, or information from contracts and legal documents, speeding up research.
- Financial reporting: Finance teams can ask Qlik Answers to extract relevant data from reports, helping them find important information more efficiently.
- Healthcare: Healthcare professionals can query patient documents, research reports, or treatment outcomes, leading to faster, more informed clinical decisions.
The future of AI in data analytics with Qlik Answers
Qlik Answers is paving the way for a new era in data analytics, where interacting with unstructured data becomes as simple as asking a question. As AI continues to evolve, Qlik Answers will adapt, offering increasingly refined and powerful insights tailored to your specific needs.
With Qlik Answers, businesses can break free from the complexity of unstructured data and leverage it to drive smarter, faster decisions. While it doesn’t integrate with structured data tools, its ability to read and respond to document-based queries makes it a valuable resource for organisations looking to unlock the hidden potential in their unstructured data sources.
