Firms face significant gap in return on their investment, as more than 90% fail to utilize their employees’ analytics skills

Alteryx, Inc, the Analytics Automation company, issued findings from Alteryx-commissioned IDC research, “4 Ways to Unlock Transformative Business Outcomes from Analytic Investments,” revealing that 73 percent of organizations expect analytics spend will outpace other software investments in the next 12-18 months. As organizations increase their spending on analytics, the global survey finds less than half of business decisions are based on analytics.

Further, even fewer are maximizing advanced analytics, as less than 30 percent of decisions are informed by artificial intelligence and machine learning for most organizations. To help businesses maximize their analytics investments, the global IDC survey uncovered the impacts of people, data, and analytics automation on return on investment (ROI).

Ninety-three percent of organizations are not fully using the analytics skills of their employees. This is in part due to only one out of five organizations reporting commensurate investment in upskilling for analytics and data literacy. IDC further uncovered:

• 9 out of 10 respondents say that less than half of their knowledge workers are active users of analytics software other than spreadsheets
• 63 percent of organizations are not using the full breadth of data types available
• 82 percent of organizations indicate data access policies are only moderately effective or worse
• Enterprise-wide analytics solutions have been deployed in less than half of the departments that need them

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Key strategies to maximize analytics investments and drive transformative business outcomes

Many business processes in today’s digital economy are still manually running on paper and outdated spreadsheets, creating a widening analytics gap. When respondents invested in a low-code/no-code analytics automation platform and followed specific strategies, IDC found organizations improved their financial, customer, and operational metrics. These strategies included:

• Deploying easy-to-use cloud-based or hybrid AI-infused analytics technology to support cross-functional use cases
• Breaking down data and analytics silos by emphasizing enterprise-wide analytics
• Developing a data culture that aligns technology spend with upskilling on data literacy
• Ensuring alignment on analytics initiatives between IT and line of business to eliminate shadow IT

“It’s no surprise that so few organizations are ahead of the curve when it comes to analytic maturity considering they leave out a key component: people,” said Dan Vesset, group vice president, Analytics and Information Management, IDC. “What we’re seeing is that organizations that provide analytics tools that are easy to use and easy to access, while upskilling their talent, achieve more ROI from their respective analytics investment than organizations who do not.”

One of the key organizations using Alteryx to enable a culture of analytics is United Kingdom-based financial services company Brookson. “Alteryx has transformed the careers of so many individuals at our company,” said Brian Millrine, CIO and strategy director at Brookson. “I believe they have one of the most exciting roles in the organization delivering high-velocity digital transformation, and what they do is recognized as golden at all levels of our organization. Alteryx will be a fundamental solution for them to use going forward and they will become rockstars of business.”

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