Foundry’s 2022 Data & Analytics Study shows improving business process automation and customer engagement as top goals for IT decision-makers

 Foundry, the global leader in media, martech and data for the tech community, released the 2022 Foundry Data & Analytics Study, which gives insights into organizations’ data-driven initiatives, investments, results and strategies. Data and analytics have been instrumental to helping organizations successfully solve problems and IT decision-makers (ITDMs) have taken notice as 84% of organizations have either already deployed or have data-driven projects on their roadmaps.

Data-Driven Projects Continue Moving Forward
Data-driven projects continue to accelerate as 34% of organizations stated that they have already deployed or implemented data-driven projects compared to 28% of organizations stating the same in 2021. However, enterprises are further along in their data-driven plans compared to SMBs as 92% of enterprise organizations have already deployed or are considering data-driven projects compared to 79% of SMBs.

For businesses moving data-driven initiatives forward, top goals and objectives include:

• Improving and automating internal business process (50%)
• Improving customer insight and engagement (46%)
• Improving customer service and support (43%)
• Improving and automating IT operations (43%)
• Improving existing products (36%)
• Improving information security and cybersecurity (36%)

“Data and analytics tools continue to improve and the clear demand for these types of projects will continue to efficiently move these initiatives forward,” said Stacey Raap, Marketing & Research Manager, Foundry. “These tools are providing businesses with invaluable insights, allowing them to increase performance and growth. We will likely see data and analytics tools in all parts of the business as they continue to advance.”

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Challenges Still Need To Be Overcome
Although more organizations are deploying data-driven initiatives, there are still many challenges that ITDMs look to overcome. When asked which areas within their data-driven initiatives are causing the most pain for their organization, the majority of respondents stated data quality (41%), followed by data security and governance (38%), data analysis (31%), and data preparation/transformation (29%).

Challenges go deeper than technical limitations as 44% of ITDMs declare a lack of appropriate skills as a challenge getting in the way of their organization making further progress on their data-driven initiatives. Because of this, 41% of respondents state their organization is in need of analytical training to support their data and analytics initiatives.

“As with any part of an organization’s growing technology stack, there are always challenges to overcome and IT teams and end users need to be given the correct resources to continue moving in a forward trajectory,” added Raap. “Organizations must invest to alleviate the pain points associated with data-driven tools and provide employees with the needed resources to refine their skillset.”

Data & Analytics Investments and Vendor Criteria
Over three quarters (77%) of organizations are making necessary investments in data and analytics technologies to compete in the marketplace. The average spend on data-driven initiatives over the next 12 months is $12.3M, and 55% of ITDMs expect their IT budget allocated to data-driven initiatives to increase in the next year, up from 44% in 2021. However, 33% of respondents expect the budget to remain the same and only 4% expect it to decrease.

When evaluating data & analytics vendors, organizations cite data reporting and visualization capabilities (36%) as the most important criteria, followed by security and governance capabilities (31%), integration into existing infrastructure (31%), self-service analytics for non-technical users (26%) and data integration and transformation pipeline (26%).

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