Data analysts have firmly asserted their seat at the executive table. Now more than ever, businesses are recognising that a data-driven approach to decision-making enhances a company’s competitive edge and can play a significant role in fuelling growth. With this in mind, business executives are inviting analysts to join them in the boardroom, and the executive dependency on analysts is ever-increasing.
However, the bright spotlight on data and business intelligence is also bringing the challenges of analysis to the surface. These challenges aren’t in the ‘what’ (analysts have more than enough – if not too much – data to action). Rather, the problem is in the ‘why’.
Business executives want to dig beneath the surface of the insights that analysts present to them. In particular, it has become clear that business personnel want to see more than just data and charts. Instead, they want a more holistic picture that offers context and reason. Not to mention, these surface-level charts can require significant effort on the part of the analyst, who must pull data into excel, pivot between sources, and hunt for drivers.
Delivering the ‘why’ necessitates extra steps that would traditionally be done manually. Rather than simply extracting value from their data, analysts must then examine their visualisations to identify key insights. Then, they must harness these insights to develop a narrative, before communicating that story effectively to their executives. This final step can be incredibly time-consuming, which is far from ideal; organisations need business-critical information at their disposal at all times. Without insights, business leaders make decisions based on intuition, gut feelings, or “the way it’s always been done.” In 2020, insights drive business outcomes – they help executives identify and capitalise on growth opportunities faster than their competitors.
As such, the demand for quick and meaningful insights is unwavering as leaders aspire to drive the right actions to achieve meaningful outcomes. Therefore, analysts need a different approach to help them reach end results quicker and more effectively. Often, when we consider ways to save time and to encourage more efficient working, all signs point to automation – and data analysis is no exception to the rule.
Automation has been gaining prominence over the years as businesses strive to become smarter versions of themselves. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has also upped the ante on automation initiatives, making it a business imperative rather than simply a nice-to-have. With that said, analysis will most certainly be swept up in the automation momentum, and a new norm for it will be created in turn.
Automate your analysis with AnswerRocket
To better demonstrate why automation is a fantastic tool in your analysis arsenal, you only need to look at AnswerRocket. Their offering harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to automate the grunt work that comes with business analysis. The end result? Analysts can generate insights in a matter of seconds.
So how exactly does it work? With AnswerRocket, you can take advantage of their machine learning bots, otherwise known as RocketBots, to automate entire analytics workflows. Better still, RocketBots can withstand even the most complex analysis while maintaining their promise of delivering results in no time at all.
RocketBots can be actioned in different ways. One is through asking natural language questions, such as “how did my category do last month?”. Through its conversational search capabilities, anyone can take advantage of AnswerRocket to easily explore their data. Otherwise, you can also invoke a RocketBot through scheduled or event-triggered analysis. In turn, you can enjoy on-going analysis round the clock, ensuring you don’t miss a beat in critical updates.
By pushing meaningful insights to users, RocketBots present a fundamentally different approach; traditional analytics require analysts to interpret output, meaning the analysts still perform the bulk of the analysis. RocketBots, in contrast, perform analysis on behalf of analysts, meaning analysts can focus on turning insights into action, advising decision-makers and stakeholders instead of wrangling spreadsheets together. This is different from the traditional approach of having to do the analysis. Rather, it’s done on your behalf, giving you a head start.
Through nifty machine learning techniques, RocketBots can also analyse all possible data combinations, so nothing is missed. Therefore, businesses gain meaningful, exhaustively researched insights at speed, which is far more than what manual processes can achieve. Because RocketBots test every assumption, they aren’t limited by human bias, and they can uncover hidden insights that a person may not consider.
However, the cherry on top of AnswerRocket’s analytics solution is perhaps its ability to tell a clear, concise story, supported by the most relevant visualisations. In the quest to demonstrate ‘why’, analysts everywhere will be pleased to learn that RocketBots can deliver answers for the boardroom through automatically built presentations, interactive visualisations, and a superlative insights narrative. What’s more, RocketBots can detect any notable changes in your data and keep you informed via a continuous feed of insightful stories, creating a user experience akin to a news feed of top headlines.
With AnswerRocket’s many impressive features, analysts can communicate their findings to business executives much more effectively. With RocketBots in tow, companies can move quicker, bettering their competitive advantage as a result. In an age where being data-driven is synonymous with being successful, automation has firmly asserted its place. Therefore, AnswerRocket is a no-brainer for companies wanting to tap into the action and finally join the dots between business and data.
Don't miss our podcast with AnswerRocket on delivering business value with automated, augmented analytics.
