Why Embedded Analytics Will Change Everything

In the aftermath of a US presidential election in which all major polls failed to predict the outc

Analytics is being embedded in all kinds of software which suggests a major shift is on the horizon. How we think about analytics will change and so will our use of analytics. We explain why.

Analytics are being embedded in all kinds of software. As a result, the ecosystem is changing, and with it so is our relationship to analytics. Historically, analytics and BI have been treated as something separate — we “do”analytics, we’re “doing” ad hoc reporting — but increasingly, analytics are becoming an integral part of software experiences, from online shopping to smart watches and to enterprise applications.

“We’re creating whole industries that are centered around data and analytics that are going to challenge the status quo of every industry,” said Goutham Belliappa, Big Data and Analytics practice leader, for Capgemini North America. “Analytics will become so ubiquitous, we won’t even notice it.  From a business perspective, it’s going to transform entire industries.”

Three drivers are collectively changing how we experience and think about analytics. The first, as previously mentioned, is embedding analytics into all kinds of software. The second is automation, and the third is a shift in the way software is built.

Modern software generates and analyzes more data than ever, and the trend is going to accelerate. The resulting glut of data is outpacing humans’ ability to manage and analyze it, so some analytics necessarily have to be automated, as do some decisions. As a result, analytics has become invisible in some contexts, and it’s going to become invisible in still more contexts soon.

“Frictionless” is a good way to describe what people are striving for in effective user experiences.  Certainly, with more automation and more behind-the-scenes analytics, how we think of analytics will change,” said Gene Leganza, VP & research director at Forrester Research. “We’ll be thinking about the results — do we like the recommendations of this site’s or this app’s recommendation engine or is that one better?  We’ll gravitate towards the services that just work better for us without knowing how they do it.”

That’s not to say that automated analytics should be implemented as black boxes.