Business Intelligence and Big Data

Trend 5: Business Intelligence and Big Data

More than a third of midsize and larger organizations areboosting their deployment of business intelligence (BI) or business analytics(BA), according to our study. A third are expanding the platforms on which BI/‌BAwill be reported?including desktop clients, clouds and mobile platforms,especially tablets. Even knowledge management applications are seeing thisboost in a quarter of the firms we surveyed.

Perhaps more significantly, a fifth of these organizationsexpect increasing integration of the rich, unstructured data streams (called?big data?) into corporate data resources. This is a strong indication that thedata rush will accelerate in 2012, as expanding information resources become thenew frontiers for business growth.

For Premier, a Charlotte, N.C.?based organization thatprovides business solutions to the health care industry, big data represents amajor expansion of operations. ?Today, health care providers need to understandfinancial risk? more than they used to, says Randy Thomas, vice president ofportfolio strategy and design.

Premier uses IBM business analytics to collect and analyzehighly disparate and decentralized data streams?such as patient care, labor orsupply chain information?from numerous providers, and deliver their analysisback to those providers as a growing part of their service offering. ?There isa lot of market demand for a complete solution,? Thomas says. Their biggestchallenge? ?Figuring out what to do first.?

 

For more, read Baseline’s Top 10 Business Trends of2012.