As organizations enter 2025, it is time to reflect on the significant trends that shaped data governance in 2024 and anticipate what lies ahead. Multiple factors have driven the rapid evolution of data governance frameworks, including advancements in technology, increased regulatory oversight, and shifting business priorities. To continually improve data governance, it is critical to review key […]
A Financial Approach to Evaluating Data, Analytics, and AI Investments
Extracting tangible business benefits from data and analytics projects, including those involving AI, has proven challenging for most enterprises. In 2019, VentureBeat reported that 87% of data and analytics (D&A) projects failed to reach production. In 2022, Gartner found that only 20% of insights derived from analytics translated into business outcomes. Despite various reasons for […]
Strategies to Mitigate Cloud Expenses Amidst the Rise of AI
When diving into the world of AI, you have likely noticed how cloud costs can skyrocket unexpectedly, with bills piling up along the way. According to my company’s latest State of the Cloud Report, over half of all data now resides in public clouds. With 84% of the respondents citing cloud spending as their primary challenge, […]
Data Storytelling: Be a Data-Driven Organization
With the staggering amount of data in use today, it’s no wonder that business leaders are increasingly harnessing its power to develop meaningful insights and make informed decisions. According to a survey by Deloitte, organizations that make use of data for decision-making are twice as likely to exceed their business goals and outperform their competitors. One method to […]
The Future of Data Literacy
There was a time when only elite, tech-savvy staff in an organization understood and felt qualified to discuss data-enabled business decisions. These individuals often possessed advanced academic degrees in data science, data engineering, statistics, operations research, and other allied fields and did not speak the language of the ordinary business staff. As a result, there […]
Self-Service Analytics: Pros and Cons
Self-service analytics empowers the non-technical users in an organization. Traditionally, data analysis was the domain of specialized data scientists or IT professionals with skills to manipulate and interpret complex datasets. In self-service analytics, user-friendly tools enable ordinary business users to conduct data analyses without expert knowledge or support. These tools typically feature user-friendly interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, and pre-built templates […]
Mind the Gap: Ask for Business Actions, Not Business Value
I’m not sure I know anyone in the data and analytics field whose platform doesn’t face budget scrutiny. Analytics is expensive. And when cost-cutting is the order of the day, analytics is a big target. Up shields. Time for another business value inventory. I’ve spoken with consultants who have completed analytics business value inventories at […]
Data Visualization in the Era of AI/ML
How will data visualization evolve in the era of AI/ML? While AI is rapidly evolving, it is ironic that business users are still using “dumb” dashboards. The challenge is to move beyond these unintelligent dashboards to a genuinely transformative visual analytics solution that harnesses the power of AI/ML. While some vendors offer a ChatGPT-like querying […]
Mind the Gap: Start Modernizing Analytics by Reorienting Your Enterprise Analytics Team
… and your data warehouse / data lake / data lakehouse. A few months ago, I talked about how nearly all of our analytics architectures are stuck in the 1990s. Maybe an executive at your company read that article, and now you have a mandate to “modernize analytics.” Let’s say that they even understand that just […]
Evaluating Enterprise Data Literacy
Any organization that aims toward complete digital transformation must move toward enterprise data literacy. So, what exactly is data literacy? Gartner defines data literacy as: “The ability to read, write and communicate data in context, including an understanding of data sources and constructs, analytical methods and techniques applied – and the ability to describe the […]