Business Intelligence, being the fastest-moving technology among the virtual world and business arenas, witnessed a tremendous change in 2015. With many organizations opening up data to their employees, the techniques for adopting the technology and bringing more value to their data are also multiplying. This has significantly increased industry’s appetite for more advanced analytics so that much deeper questions can be answered with greater insights on the data. 

These BI trends for 2016 will bring the industry one step closer in satisfying its needs.

Visual Analytics is now more talked about

People have changed their view of seeing data. They now want their data to explore more questions and provide deeper insights; and the expectation is only going to heighten with coming time. The need for data to give more useful information to data experts as well as non-experts is also on a rise. To cater these requirements, visual analytics tools empower people to quickly reach insights, build meaningful collaborations and create a community around the data.

Collaboration of Governance and Self-service Analytics

It is a common thinking that governance and self-service analytics don’t go hand-in-hand. But this misconception is slowly diminishing with the gap between the two closing. Organizations have realized the importance of governance in nurturing the analytics culture and effectively meeting the business needs. The data can be safely analyzed if it is kept at a centralized position with clean and fast data sources and provided with optimum quality of security and performance.

Evolution of Data Integration

Agile analytics is what every company desire these days, while quickly providing the right data to the right people. But the process comes with a challenge as the data is stored in many different locations and formats and working with such varied data sources can be tedious at times. 2016 is going to witness a lot of new data integration players. The evolution of sophisticated tools and addition of new data sources will affect organizations’ decision of accessing all the data from a single location. Each data set will be accessed from its original location and data explorers will then be able to combine, blend and join the data using more agile tools and methods.

Swift Response with Democratized Data Product Chain

As 2016 is set to see a stream of millennials making a part of the workforce, people are likely to seek empowerment across the data range. If business users want to stay iterative, they must have the capability to shape certain data on the fly. This has increased the need of self-service data preparation tools and the growth of data warehouses as a natural extension of self-service analytics. This kind of democratization will allow quick response to shifting priorities with ultimate ease.

Analytics Center of Excellence (COE) is on a Boom

To promote self-service analytics adoption, organizations are choosing to establish Center of Excellence, as they play a critical role in applying a data-driven culture. Enablement programs like online forums and one-on-one training help these centers to empower even novices to successfully integrate data into their decision-making process. These centers also enable data to inform organizational workflow. 

Advanced Analytics Made Simpler

Non-analysts are becoming more sophisticated across the organization as the expectations have come way up from just the data charts representation. Today’s need is to gather deeper and more meaningful analytics from the data. Thus, organizations are likely to adopt platforms that will allow users to apply statistics, ask questions and stay in flow of their analysis. 

The Evolution of Cloud Data & Cloud Analytics

2015 saw a significant increase in number of people embracing the cloud technology. They have realized that putting data on the cloud is easy and scalable and also allows them to be agile through the cloud analytics. With the evolution of tools to consume web data, more and more people are planning to move to the cloud in 2016. This has helped cloud technology become equivalent to any other critical enterprise system in near future.

Mobile Analytics Succeeding Independently

Mobile analytics is no longer considered as just an interface to legacy Business Intelligence products. Products with fluid and mobile-first experience became the emerging trend in 2015. As a result, working with data became a dynamic part of the analytics process rather than just being a chore in the past.

People Begin to Embrace IoT Data

2016 will see a tremendous increase in the usage of Internet of Things with almost everything having a sensor sending information back to the base ship. This technology will be generating huge amount of data around the clock with the ability to draw more effective and deeper insights. To cater this, organizations are on a hunt for tools that accomplish this task effectively by securely exploring and sharing the findings among others.

The Era of New Technologies

BI ecosystem is also expected to welcome a number of new technologies this year. Hadoop accelerators, IoT data integration, NoSQL data integration and improved social media, all will provide various opportunities for a new startups. As a result, markets will get consolidated and organizations will continue to part their ways from a single solution, to embrace an open and flexible range of new technologies. 

With the start of the New Year, it’s time to look towards the future. The above list is not a foretelling – the innovations are already in use, but the way they are going to change the present and future of technology is what worth waiting for. These Business Intelligence trends will definitely be on everyone’s priority lists and keyboards in 2016. Thus, to leverage these technologies in the most optimized manner, get associated with a partner that can provide you the expert guidance and support and add more value to your business using right BI tools and technologies.