10 business intelligence trends we expect to see in 2017

Over the last few years, we’ve watched data transform organizations of all types and sizes. Companies that began harnessing the power of their data gained a competitive edge and were able to innovate faster. What's in store for next year? Here are 10 trend we expect to see in 2017.

These organizations replaced traditional, IT-centric reporting tools with easy-to-use and intuitive modern business-intelligence platforms that enable self-service at scale. Business users gained the ability to perform analytics and drive decisions. And IT, no longer stuck in the report-factory role, became the enablers of this transformation and put the infrastructure in place to accelerate use adoption.

What’s in store for next year? IT will continue to partner with the business and implement self-service analytics at scale. And we’ll see a number of exciting changes as a result.

Every year, we reflect on the state of our industry and make predictions on trends we expect to see in the following year. Here are two that stand out.

Collaborative analytics goes from the fringe to the core

Like many things in life, many heads are better than one when it comes to business analytics. And in 2017, collaborative analytics will take center stage as governed data becomes more accessible.

People will have business discussions using data, engaging each other with facts and insights. They’ll also be able to collaborate more easily with experts in the organization and drive insights faster by leveraging the collective intelligence of the organization.

Self-service analytics extends to data prep

While self-service data discovery has become the standard, data prep has remained in the realm of IT and data experts. This will change in 2017.

Common data-prep tasks like data parsing, JSON and HTML imports, and data wrangling will no longer be delegated to specialists. With new innovations in this transforming space, everyone will be able to tackle these tasks as part of their analytics flow.

This will raise new considerations surrounding data governance, but successful IT groups are already embracing the opportunity. By guiding the transition to self-service data prep, IT can make sure data is accessible to the entire organization and people are working in a safe data environment.

Those are just two of our predictions for 2017. Check out the full set in the slideshare below. Then take our survey to assess your own progress on each trend.