Logi Analytics released findings from a survey of software
and application teams in their report titled
2021 State of
Analytics: How Data Literacy Improves Decision-Making. The research explores how software leadership teams view their
data literacy and reinforces the notion that users want valuable analytics in
their work processes. 463 individuals across the U.S. - those employed by a
digital/software or software/analytics organization with at least 200 employees
working at the manager level or above - responded to the survey conducted by
Hanover Research.
Organizations that achieve true
data fluency have empowered their workforce with the tools to quickly make
informed, data-driven decisions. However, according to the survey results,
there is a disconnect in organizations' perceived data literacy among both
applications and end users. Very few organizations have an application
functioning at the data challenged level (<1%) and about half are
functioning at the data literate level (47%), with slightly more than one-third
at the data aware level (38%), and a few functioning at the highest level of
data fluent (15%).
Definitions of data literate,
data awareness, and data fluent for end users:
- Data challenged: End
users have no-to-low levels of analytics skills or data access.
- Data literate: End
users have achieved a comfort level working with, manipulating, analyzing
and visualizing data
- Data awareness: End
users can use a combination of past experiences, intuition, judgment and
qualitative inputs in addition to data analysis to make decisions
- Data fluent: End
users go beyond insights and instinct to communicate, collaborate, tell
stories and drive ideas to make decisions using data
"With billions spent on
stand-alone data discovery tools, many organizations assume their employees and
applications are placed farther along the data literacy continuum than they
actually are," said Brett Hansen, CMO at Logi Analytics. "This research
uncovers the inadequacies of how end users and applications perceive and
understand data. When analytics are widely available, user-friendly,
customizable, and easy to navigate, it leads to more accurate decision making."
In addition to the misconception
that most teams are data-literate, the survey found that teams also
overestimate their applications' ability to support data literacy. Eighty-six
percent of survey respondents believe their applications can support data
fluent end users. However, only 15% of applications are actually able to do so.
To increase data literacy, organizations need applications that meet them at
their level, are powerful, and easy-to-use.
"This report aimed to outline how
most application teams are blind to their application's analytical failings,
and low analytics/BI adoption rates will perpetuate until this gap is
recognized and applications invest in better analytics," said James Wilcox,
Senior Director at Hanover Research. "The results of the study indicate an
overestimation of end users' abilities and the analytics tend to be ineffective
and underutilized, thus hurting the overall adoption."
Other key findings include:
- Seventy-seven percent of
organizations consider end-user data literacy "very" or "extremely
important" to fast and accurate decision-making.
- Most application teams (75%)
consider it "very" or "extremely important" to help users become more data
literate.
- Less than 60% of end users are
using even the most basic analytics capabilities
To
view the full report, visit
https://go.logianalytics.com/report-hanover-2021-data-literacy.html.