The "Human-Element" Still Critical to Data Analytics Success
Data analytics can provide a thorough view of your data, which many companies have leveraged for successful business outcomes. This article divulges that executives believe the ‘human element’ in data analytics is critical to the positive outcomes they’ve experience using BI. It takes someone to know what they are looking for to ‘connect the dots’ and use that information to make decisions that truly help the business. Smaller organizations may resist BI tools because their staff might not include analysts, and if they can’t make heads or tails of this data, their investment may prove unsound. Because there are so many BI tools on the market it is important to find one that fits your organization’s needs and goals. If you are a smaller organization without an analyst on the payroll, it makes more sense to use a product that is lightweight, easy to use, and visually rich. This way everyone is empowered to make data-driven decisions, and they won’t need a lot of training or a degree in IT.
As reported by the American Lawyer earlier this month, the advent of automated technologies is deeply impacting the profession of law, and many now believe that legal support functions traditionally overseen by paralegals and junior attorneys could soon be handled by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. According to the technology survey conducted by Altman Weil, 35 percent of law firm leaders said they could envision replacing first-year associates with law-focused computer intelligence within the next five to 10 years.
While artificial intelligence and data analytics platforms have the capacity to create a massive paradigm shift across all industries that could potentially see them take on repetitive predictable tasks, another survey conducted by Forbes Insights and EY shows that many executives still consider the human element of their organization paramount to the implementation of such technologies. Based on the research findings, it appears executives believe that personnel are as responsible for the empowerment of technology as technology is in empowering personnel.
The survey identified the top 10 percent of enterprises that had implemented data analytics and used them to gain a market edge, and then compared their strategies to other less mature data analytics users. According to the figures, more mature data analytics enabled enterprises to differentiate themselves from their lower-ranked competitors by focusing on codifying the use of data analytics into their organizational culture and making more effort to train them in the support of that effort. Fifty-four percent of executives with leading analytics organizations report that analytics is central to their overall business strategy, and about half said they had made strides to implement an analytics-driven culture within their organizations.
That cultural alignment comes in the form of continued education for employees as well as the efforts made to implement it day-to-day. For example, 36 percent of those leaders said analytic insights are embedded into all of their business processes and customer interactions. Twenty-seven percent said they reward employees for acting on opportunities identified through the use of data analysis. Additionally, around 47 percent of leaders provided onsite training opportunities to their employees, as compared to 38 percent of less mature analytics users.
“For a lot of companies, the bottleneck to creating value is not data, technology or advanced analytics skill sets,” said Bruce Rogers, chief insights officer of Forbes Insights, in a statement accompanying the release of the survey. “It’s a question of, once we have the insights from analytics, what are we doing with it? At the end of the day, success still involves people making different decisions and changing business processes.”
Overall, the survey emphasized that while data analytics can give organizations a competitive advantage as such tools become more prevalent, it is the edification and empowerment of enterprise staff that is becoming a differentiator in the market.
“This report illustrates the need for organizations to develop an effective business strategy to compete in today’s data-driven world,” said Chris Mazzei, principal and chief analytics officer at EY. “Technology is no longer a strong enough differentiating factor among organizations—companies must invest in people and recognize the importance of the human element if they are to reap the benefits of their analytics initiatives.”
According to another survey released earlier this year, titled “Data Analytics in the Legal Community: 2015-2016 Trends,” 93 percent of legal community respondents believe that data analytics will become an important tool in practice of law and its use more common. Another 31 percent said that data analytics would become “very important, will be considered indispensable, and its use widespread.”
As the use of technology becomes more critical to the legal space, just has it had in other industries those investing in technology must consider how they develop their staff alongside the implementation of such tools. Maybe it’s still too early to invest in a paraleg-HAL 9000 after all.
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