The Rise of Analytics

The term analytics was just starting to gain traction in 2003 when Nucleus Research launched the Tech ROI Awards. After the huge success of data mining in the 90s, vendors started to expand capabilities and introduce Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. And that in turn led to the analytics category.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but actually the shift from BI to analytics speaks to the quantum leap we’ve experienced in functionality. BI was simply not big enough to describe the predictive nature of the solution. I doubt many people knew in 2003 just how central analytics would emerge for business today.

We’ve seen the rise of analytics through our research and we’ve heard the creative ways businesses are leveraging the software through our many case studies. And in addition to gauging adoption of the software, we’ve seen how analytics is driving ROI up and accelerating time-to-value.

Analytics implementations account for four of this year’s 10 ROI Award winners, delivering some of the top returns. That’s fairly consistent with previous years since analytics emerged as a leading category around 2010. And we expect to see it remain a top solution and even grow in the years ahead.

In fact, the industry is poised for a significant growth wave. That’s being driven by three key factors.

• In addition to stand-alone solutions, analytics are increasingly being integrated with other key business applications

• Several mid-market firms have been driving a move toward verticalized solutions tailored to specific industries for off-the-shelf benefits. IBM has now thrown its hat into the ring as well.

• Analytics has emerged as a top investment area among the largest technology providers, with major initiatives at IBM, Microsoft, Google and even Amazon.

This all speaks to a bright future for analytics and better solutions for business ahead.

Congratulations to this year’s ROI Award winners for analytics:

• SpotPromo with an ROI of 2799% using Pentaho Business Analytics
• Grizzly Oil Sands with an ROI of 1580%using Attunity
• Raise with an ROI of 804% using GoodData
• Gentiva with an ROI of 751% using Adaptive Insights

For more on the awards and winners, go to https://nucleusr.wpengine.com/research/search/?search_text=2015%20ROI&