Next Generation Business Analytics
Technologies and techniques to develop new insights into company performance
Next generation technologies and techniques are allowing organizations of all types and sizes to
uncover new insights into company performance. More than ever before, companies are striving to
understand and analyze the massive amounts of data collected by disparate technology systems
and existing data warehouses. Next generation solutions supplement existing systems and provide
fast, flexible, and low cost technologies that put more data directly into the hands of end users with
tools that allow deeper exploration and understanding of company, customer, and product
performance.
Acquisitions, new ventures, new systems, new technologies and many other factors often produce
disparate data and information silos throughout a company. These silos contain valuable
transaction and operational data that organizations typically summarize and store, in whole or in
part, in central data warehouses. These systems, including central data warehouses, typically have
basic reporting and analysis mechanisms to summarize and distribute the information but suffer
three major shortcomings:
They lack sufficient breadth and depth of detailed operational data in one location for
thorough in-depth analysis,
They often require IT development efforts and associated lead times to produce and
maintain both standard and ad-hoc reports, and
They don’t provide “easy to use” tools for end-users to support ad-hoc analysis and
exploration that leads to new insights into company, product, and customer performance.
Next generation data base technologies and data analysis tools allow businesses to integrate and
store practically unlimited amounts of detailed transaction data and provide end users direct access
with sophisticated analysis tools. For example, even small and mid-size retailers can now aggregate
and store several years of POS transaction data combined with end of day inventory data and
customer loyalty data to support new levels of localization, store level planning, and customer
analysis. Financial services organizations can now aggregate massive amounts of security
transaction data with third party data sources to support new levels of risk and performance
analysis.
The next generation technologies and tools allow easy integration of disparate data sources and
require minimal IT design and development efforts. They eliminate traditional storage and
performance limitations regarding quantity of data, number of end users, and methods of analysis.
Many of these solutions are also offered as hosted or Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions which
allow organizations to quickly pilot and adopt new solutions to complement existing systems at
minimal cost and commitment.
Any organization should evaluate some of the new solutions entering the market and assess their
usefulness. Most organizations will find that these new offerings produce immediate value and a
fast ROI which is particularly attractive in the current economic climate where organizations need
to “do more with less” and exploit the data and systems already in place.
Michael Beller
President and CEO
Lightship Partners LLC
mbeller@LightshipPartners.com
97 POWERHOUSE ROAD, ROSLYN HEIGHTS, NY 11577 516-721-7331 WWW.LIGHTSHIPPARTNERS.COM