By Jessica Day, Senior Director for
Marketing Strategy at Dialpad
In 2022, business intelligence trends are all
centered around data. From cloud migration to embedded analytics, B2B software
as a service (SaaS) tools, like funnel analytics and next-generation
communications, enhance business intelligence and make it legible to every staff member. Here are six key
trends to look out for in 2022.
1.
Self-service business intelligence
The Business Application Research Center's yearly survey has consistently ranked
self-service business intelligence as a high priority for companies. One
macro-trend we'll see throughout this article is the breaking down of siloes
between data analytics and the employees on the ground. This is made possible
by more insightful and user-friendly business intelligence tools.
In a remote-first, BYOD
(bring-your-own-device) environment, it's important that powerful BI is
available to staff no matter what device they're on. With business
communication software, like Dialpad, running across desktop, tablet, and
mobile, it's critical that self-service BI enables easy access to data in any
location and on any device.
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2.
Cloud migration
The move into the cloud isn't a new trend, but
with companies going remote or hybrid, it's becoming more important
than ever. Dresner found that 54% of businesses say cloud is
becoming critical to their business.
Reasons for moving to the cloud include
reduced maintenance of on-site technology and more flexible IT
infrastructure that can grow with the company. Additionally, the
cloud server host takes on the cost of maintenance and much better
cybersecurity than most companies could afford.
With companies settling on their remote/hybrid
configurations, they're hammering out the little details like mobile device
management for their team. One of the benefits of migrating from legacy management to android
enterprise and other cloud services is that device management is
made much simpler when it's into one centralized cloud service, which works
even if the team is spread out remotely.
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source
3.
Data-driven decision-making
Data-driven decision-making isn't just about harvesting
more data from your operations. It's also about distributing the insights from
that data more evenly throughout the company in a process called "data democratization."
This partly means improving data literacy through leadership, but it also
means making sure that every part of your business is touched by data
collection and analytics. Even something as personal as your customer support
line.
What is workforce management in a data-driven
contact center? It isn't just about monitoring employee performance. Managers are
better able to see the common pain points customers are having with the product
or service. Better still, this data is surfaced directly to the customer
service reps on the front line.
AI-enabled services like automatic
transcripts, sentiment analysis, and word clouds take individual conversations
and pull them into one view. This enables managers to make quick decisions
about the customer service approach and respond intelligently to issues that
repeatedly come up.
4.
Collaborative business
intelligence
In 2022, companies are swamped with different
software tools in different departments collecting different kinds of data on,
often, the same customers. Collaborative business intelligence breaks down
silos and collects all this data in one place.
For example, getting your sales and marketing
teams to sing from the same spreadsheet would not only give them more context
on key accounts. It would also enable data-driven decision-making across the
sales and marketing funnel by actually rendering it as one funnel rather than a collection of different .csv files stored
across email, lead generation, and CRM software.
Tools like Sisence, Looker, and Periscope Data
ingest data from many sources and pull it all together in one simple, real-time
dashboard. These reports provide business intelligence that is powerful enough
for data scientists but simple enough for new recruits. This enables everyone
to make data-driven decisions on the fly.
5.
Data storytelling
Data storytelling and visualization together
are another big trend for 2022. All the data in the world is no good without
context, and if your team is glued to a large spreadsheet all day, it's easy to
reach information overload.
Adoption rates for business intelligence
software are still low, with one survey from the Business Application Research
Center (BARC) putting it as low as 15% in 2020. From your senior
leadership to your front-line customer service staff, business intelligence
needs to make itself relevant to users' problems and ambitions.
The software has to be easy to use, and it has
to be able to present the data in a variety of context-dependent formats. For
example, if you're running a data-driven contact center, you want sentiment
analysis presented as an aggregated word cloud during a high-level business
meeting.
But that's of little use to the customer service
rep on the call, who can relate more to that same data presented as the individual profile of
the customer they're talking to. The customer service rep can make data-driven
decisions about how best to solve a customer's problem or how important a
customer is in terms of yearly spending with you.
If the rep can see this is a key account
they're speaking to, they should be able to make larger accommodations like
discounts or free returns to keep them coming back.
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source
6.
Embedded analytics
The next generation of analytics software is
going to take all of these lessons above and turn them towards richer, more
context-dependent reporting. Conventionally, businesses kept the data analytics
separate from the people doing the work on the ground.
With businesses having to make decisions
faster than ever amidst high uncertainty, it's important that people don't have
to go through the data science team to get the information they need. Embedded analytics put data right in the apps
your team is using. At the moment, they're most relevant.
It's the software version of the famous Toyota
Production System. Among other innovations, the automaker gave employees the
freedom to stop everything and point out inefficiencies in the production line.
The only "data" they had was what was the
machinery in front of their eyes. So with analytics tools like augmented
analytics and embedded reporting, your team is bound to find ways to improve
your business at every level.
Business intelligence in 2022
For years, business intelligence has been
concerned with gathering more and more data from business operations. Now a new
generation of analytics and reporting software is going to make that data more
accessible and actionable for everyone in the company, bringing data-driven
decision-making out of the boardroom and into everyday operations.
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ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Jessica Day -
Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad
Jessica Day is the Senior Director for
Marketing Strategy at Dialpad, a modern business communications
platform that takes every kind of conversation to the next level-turning conversations
into opportunities. Jessica is an expert in collaborating with multifunctional
teams to execute and optimize marketing efforts, for both company and client
campaigns. She has written for sites such as Plutio and Supanet. Here is her LinkedIn.