Is your analytics solution getting the better of you?
Nick Barth is UK sales engineering manager at MicroStrategy
All banks, whatever their size rely on data to make decisions. With that in mind getting that data in a timely manner and in a format that can be digested easily is critical. So why can this be so difficult?
We are all used to receiving reports from our systems and even the most rudimentary examples will utilise some form of analytics, however simple. We might be getting the reports and be used to the status quo, but is your analytics platform getting the better of you? asks Nick Barth.
That might sound like a strange question, but see if any of the signs below resonate with you. If they do, your analytics platform might be keeping you away from the very insight it is supposed to give you.
Your analytics platform feels like the Wild West – On one hand, it is great that more banking staff are taking analytics into their own hands and using it to gain insights to help them make decisions, but this can’t happen at the expense of governance. An ‘anything goes’ attitude to analytics can lead to people having access to information that they shouldn’t, building inaccurate models and even breaking the law. Self-service has to be reconciled with governance, and it can, the two are not mutually exclusive.
By the time analytics gets to the bank’s decision-makers it’s too late – The best analysis in the world is useless unless it enables action to be taken. If it takes days or weeks of shoulder jostling and chasing to get analytics produced then its value diminishes the closer you get to decision time and the business is at greater risk. The best way to overcome this is to empower the institution’s decision-makers, give them the tools that allow them to build and manipulate their analysis directly to gain the insights needed.
You invest millions in big data without seeing a penny in return – You may collect gigabytes of data about your customers and other parts of your operations every day – but what have you got to show for it? If you’ve got a huge data warehouse, but have yet to find a way to let business users tap into it, then it is time to look at changing to analytics and visualization tools that will allow you to realise the true value of the investment made in big data.
Mobilising the bank has been trickier than anticipated – Being able to access anything anywhere has become the yard stick by which true mobility is measured. Analytics and reporting are no exception, with users expecting the kind of responsive and interactive experience they get when using their favourite tablet or smartphone apps. If you know that you need to embrace mobile analytics, but are getting overwhelmed by the amount of work it will take to build and manage applications across platforms – then you are probably looking at the wrong analytics solution.
Deployments are just too slow – If you are struggling to keep up with the demands of the organisation to produce dashboards or analytics apps then maybe you need more staff, or maybe you need a new solution. One that not only empowers users to build their own dashboards, but one that is comprehensive in its delivery across a range of devices, enabling IT staff to focus on building the analytics app the CEO has asked for, not the plumbing that needs to sit under it.
The reality is that enabling analytics in all banks, large and small, can no longer be simply viewed as an application requirement, delivering analytics that supports the whole organisation and enables it to realise the true potential of the data it holds requires a platform based approach. An end-to-end solution that delivers reports and analytics based on near real-time data to any user, in any location, on any device. Anything less that this impacts the productivity of your staff and the insight the bank needs to make the critical decisions that lower risk and drive growth.
