Insights matter. Businesses that use Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to uncover new business insights “will steal $1.2 trillion per annum from their less informed peers by 2020.” So says Forrester in a new report, “Predictions 2017: Artificial Intelligence Will Drive The Insights Revolution.”
Across all businesses, there will be a greater than 300% increase in investment in artificial intelligence in 2017 compared with 2016. Through the use of cognitive interfaces into complex systems, advanced analytics, and Machine Learning technology, AI will provide business users access to powerful insights never before available to them. It will help, says Forrester, “drive faster business decisions in marketing, ecommerce, product management and other areas of the business by helping close the gap from insights to action.”
The combination of AI, Big data, and IoT technologies will enable businesses investing in them and implementing them successfully to overcome barriers to data access and to mining useful insights. In 2017 these technologies will increase business’ access to data, broaden the types of data that can be analyzed, and raise the level of sophistication of the resulting insight. As a result, Forrester predicts an acceleration in the trend towards democratization of data analysis. While in 2015 it found that only 51% of data and analytics decision-makers said that they were able to easily obtain data and analyze it without the help of technologist, Forrester expects this figure to rise to around 66% in 2017.
Big data technologies will mature and vendors will increasingly integrate them with their traditional analytics platforms which will facilitate their incorporation in existing analytics processes in a wide range of organizations. The use of a single architecture for big data convergence with agile and actionable insights will become more widespread.
The third set of technologies supporting insight-driven businesses, those associated with IoT, will also become integrated with more traditional analytics offerings and Forrester expects the number of digital analytics vendors offering IoT insights capabilities to double in 2017. This will encourage their customers to invest in networking more devices and exploring the data they produce.
