The Analytics Revolution

Foreword

If you have followed the topics of business intelligence, analytics, and big data over the last decade or two, you may have wondered what is coming next. After all, the initial flurry of excitement about big data is beginning to subside, and analytics of all kinds have become an important part of business, but a familiar one by now.

What's next is in this book. Bill Franks refers to it as “operational analytics,” but it could also be called such terms as “production analytics,” “real-time analytics,” or “decision automation.” As these terms suggest, the nature of how analytics are performed is changing rapidly. It's not the analytics themselves that are changing so much. As Franks notes, operational analytics are mostly the same analytics we've done for decades, even centuries. What has changed is the context in which they are carried out.

You can read the details in the book, and you should. I will say here that instead of the back-office, slow, batch analytics of the past, operational analytics are being done much more rapidly and continuously. They are being integrated with business processes and systems, rather than being done separately. I've called this trend “Analytics 3.0,” as you will read in his first chapter, but Bill's term “operational analytics” is certainly more descriptive. And he gives a lot more detail about how this world works than I ever did.

This movement is long overdue, after 50 years of separation between analytics and the operations of businesses. ...