AI is the Future of Analytics
While analytics have been around for some time, they haven’t always been very accessible. Analytics expertise is expensive and the work is time-consuming. With artificial intelligence being applied to analytics, this is starting to change.
More businesses are recognizing the value of analytics, and AI analytics tools are starting to become a crucial tool for digital transformation at many companies. Even those with strong data science teams recognize the ways AI can make analytics more powerful.
With the power of AI tools increasing, it is changing the industry. AI is making analytics teams more efficient, making insights accessible to more businesses and individuals and it is opening up possibilities that would not exist if you were to solely rely on humans for all of your analytics needs.
Making Analytics More Accessible
In the past, an organization needed to have significant resources if it wanted to benefit from analytics. Data scientists are expensive and they are in demand. Even when you have the budget, it can be difficult to find experienced professionals available for hire.
While having a data science team can still be beneficial, AI makes it so you might not need a team of humans working with the data to benefit from analytics. Some AI analytics platforms can work with simple queries to find insights for you. It is almost like using a search engine. You type in what you want to know, and the machine does the work for you.
Automating Analytics
An AI platform can do the work autonomously. These systems come with a user interface that makes it possible for a person without the expertise to plug in different key data points and insights that might be important. The system can then extract data from different sources to provide feedback to the user.
These systems can even be set to take actions based on different triggers. As a simple example, an inventory management system could analyze patterns in the usage of material to forecast future needs. The business could even give the system directions to trigger an order when the analytics indicate that one is needed.
Processing Data
Processing data can be one of the most time-consuming parts of data analytics. It can take hours upon hours just to get the data ready to be used by an analytics platform. With AI, this work can be done quickly and with greater accuracy.
As an example, an AI-powered analytics tool could be trained to read something like invoices. Instead of having a human spend time reading each invoice and entering the data manually, the AI system could have the work done in less time.
Using Unstructured Data
Unstructured data is out of reach for traditional data analytics tools. These tools couldn’t read text documents or enter data from a picture. With AI, this is now a possibility. New AI tools can use computer vision to analyze pictures and Natural Language Processing to read documents. This opens up new possibilities for the types of data that can be analyzed and the insights that can be obtained.
Predictive and Prescriptive
What makes AI such a powerful tool for analytics is the ability to predict outcomes and prescribe actions. These are functions data scientists could perform, but AI can do it quicker and more efficiently. Not only that, but it can make predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics accessible to more people.
With predictive analytics, the AI system uses data about the past and current data to forecast what will happen in the future. With prescriptive analytics, the system would use models to test the outcomes of different actions to find the best possible course based on the data.
While AI can’t replace human data scientists in every way, it can make analytics more powerful and more accessible. For one, it can be a tool to make data science teams more effective. Beyond that, AI analytics platforms can also be useful for organizations that do not have access to an analytics team.
