5 top trends that will drive business intelligence in 2019

As I continually probe the industry, I see who is driving innovation and what those innovative advancements look like. As a result, I feel five key trends will emerge in the analytics space in 2019.

According to Gartner, machines will perform more than 40 percent of data science tasks by 2020. It seems everyone is focused on automation. There’s not a vendor in the Business Intelligence space who’s not thinking about how to automate what they do, which is primarily being driven by a skill shortage in the industry.

Everyone wants to do more with less. So, as a result, we see more and more being automated. You see it in places such as data science, data preparation tools, and the frontend delivery of dashboards.

With this in mind, I predict we’ll see a lot of products coming to the market this next year that feature automation, such as AI for BI.

We’re seeing the need for a new role that’s emerging, which some are calling the Data Interpreter or Business Data Scientist. Essentially, business users are realizing that the dashboard tools available don’t offer everything they need, such as a narrative or context around the data it delivers. Rather, they need someone who can analyze and interpret the data.

We’re already seeing new startup vendors enter the market to build storytelling tools that tell long-form narratives with data. Similarly, I just recently spoke with a large, global advertising agency that actually built their own internal data storytelling platform because no product existed on the market. It’s evident that there’s a need for data storytelling, and I see this need driving product in the space in 2019.

Several years ago, mobile BI was the next big thing. People quickly seized the iPhone trend and were excited at the thought of bringing a mobile solution to market. Originally, everyone tried to replicate the desktop experience, but we’ve found that just doesn’t work and hasn’t been very successful.