Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value from Your Data

Chapter 19

The Future of Analytics

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

—Winston Churchill, 1943

We foresee the analytics future to be bright. The practice of business analytics is still in its relative infancy, and technology advances are finally beginning to catch up to fulfill the promise of what analysts, statisticians, and business leaders have wanted for many years. Namely, that advanced analytic techniques can make sense of the myriad amount of data that businesses have at their disposal, simplify it, and make it accessible to the normal person, not only for those with the aptitude of the likes of Benoit Mandelbrot. It’s clear we are likely progressing down this path. Already, data are everywhere. For example, even in a 2011 Economist article, it was clear that data production had intensified:

Last year people stored enough data to fill 60,000 Libraries of Congress. The world’s 4 billion mobile-phone users (12% of whom own smartphones) have turned themselves into data-streams. YouTube claims to receive 24 hours of video every minute. Manufacturers have embedded 30m sensors into their products, converting mute bits of metal into data-generating nodes in the internet of things. The number of smartphones is increasing by 20% a year and the number of sensors by 30%.1

We also believe the use of advanced analytics is intensifying and will soon become the new normal for businesses. One day soon, people will stop discussing the merits of the emergence of big ...