Advanced Analytics should be top for SA’s CIOS

A recent study conducted by IBM on more than 3 000 CIO’s globally found that 4 out of 5 CIOs see Business Intelligence and analytics as top priorities for their organisations. While this is a strong ratio globally, BI and advanced analytics experts PBT, stress the importance of advanced analytics being a top of mind priority for all South African CIOs across industries.

Says Corine van Erkom Schurink, analytics team lead at PBT; “Unfortunately advanced analytics has not had the impact it should in the local market due to various reasons, the most pertinent being that it is not understood and therefore not implemented correctly. Yet, according to the IDC’s annual Top Ten Predications for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, technologies including analytics will shape the technology strategies of organisations operating in these regions, and will subsequently provide a new platform of growth for the overall IT field. This is something PBT is very cognisant of.”

Advanced analytics offers a business the opportunity to turn data into intelligent information through the further mining of the information. This allows the company to paint the picture of yesterday, today and the future. Understanding this picture is playing an increasingly important role in the overall business model for those businesses who want to turn such data into a valuable asset. The amount of data that is available and coming out of businesses continues to grow. It has been said that by 2012, there will be 5 times more data stored than that stored in 2008 – meaning that we now have access to more data than ever before known and it needs to be managed for effective risk mitigation and opportunity capitalisation.

Continues van Erkom Schurink; “With this in mind, it is important for businesses to get the process of advanced analytics right for the technology to effectively benefit the business. Too often local businesses and CIOs have been let down by this concept due to the fact that they do not fully understand what it is and how it should be implemented. This needs to change and PBT are becoming strong advocates in this regard.”

PBT suggests that getting this right involves a top to bottom approach:

• Advanced analytics should not be looked at as an IT function solely, but rather driven by the business as a whole, to allow for the correct platforms to be developed, based on the identified business model and what the business needs to achieve from having access to such data.
• The business should have a solid BI process in place whereby the data warehouse is fully up and running and offers a central representation of data that can be understood on all levels of the business.

“Considering such industry insight and forecasts, as well as the benefits that advanced analytics offers a business, it is evident that South African CIOs should be taking this technology seriously now, for current and future business success. It is only a matter of time before CIOs will begin to feel the effects on their business should they not look into this technology,” concludes van Erkom Schurink.