![\"gartner-bi-palau\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/gartner-bi-palau.jpg?resize=690%2C439&ssl=1\" "\\"gartner-bi-palau\\"")
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I attended the Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Summit last week in Barcelona. As usual, it was a great conference, and it was great to catch up with analysts, colleagues, customers, and competitors. The first morning included a Gartner keynote by James Richardson<\/a>, Ian Bertram<\/a>, and Ted Friedman<\/a>, and a vendor panel.<\/p>\n BI and Analytics is again the number one technology priority for CIOs in 2013<\/a>, and the rising importance of information changing the philosophy behind enterprise information infrastructures. Today, these are generally application-focused, with analytics added on top as an afterthought. However, organizations are increasingly realizing that information is core to competitive advantage, and hence that the analytics infrastructure is actually the core of the system. As one speaker put it, \u201capplications come and go; information is permanent\u201d. We should no longer think of applications “owning” data stores \u2013 instead, they should be seen side-by-side, as peers.<\/p>\n This means new opportunities, big changes to information architectures, and new challenges for analytics teams.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The theme of the conference was \u201cAnalyze. Predict. Act\u201d, and attendees were exhorted to use information more proactively. \u201cToday, organizations mostly use BI to describe things. Reports go unread and unused. It isn\u2019t action-oriented enough. You must put information to work.\u201d Gartner encouraged organizations to gain value from higher levels of analytic maturity, moving from information and hindsight to optimization and foresight:<\/p>\n Today, most organizations are stuck at lower-value descriptive analytics: for example, Gartner\u2019s research shows only 13%<\/a> of companies make extensive use of predictive capabilities. But more sophisticated analysis can bring great business value: \u201cwhat would you prefer – a report that shows clients you lost, or a model that shows who is about to churn and how to keep them?\u201d Gartner says three-quarters of companies plan to add more sophisticated predictive and predictive analytics in the future.<\/p>\n In order to create actionable information, we need to add \u201ccontext\u201d, and that requires breaking down analytics silos to get a broad view across the organization. Gartner recommends organizations adopt an \u201cinformation capabilities framework<\/a>:\u201d<\/p>\n An information infrastructure which is able to support different categories of \u201cuse cases\u201d \u2013 such as online transaction processing applications, analytical applications and other hybrid forms of applications and workflows \u2013 using a core set of technologies and interfaces which can be shared across those use cases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"gartnerbi](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/gartnerbi-keynote.jpg?resize=690%2C458&ssl=1\" "\\"gartnerbi")
<\/p>\nAnalytics Moves To The Core<\/h3>\n
![\"analytics_at_core_of_business\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/analytics_at_core_of_business.jpg?resize=690%2C387&ssl=1\" "\\"analytics_at_core_of_business\\"")
<\/p>\nBe Proactive: More Difficult, But More Value<\/h3>\n
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![\"analytic-maturity\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/analytic-maturity.jpg?resize=690%2C465&ssl=1\" "\\"analytic-maturity\\"")
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