Why the need for Intuitive analytics?

I just finished meeting with Kathy, a customer who is very analytical and has done an amazing job delivering value on data intelligence for her company. I spend an hour with her and she described the process of implementing tools to gain value from data.  “This has been a painful process of exploration” she said. “We are a team of analytical types, and we love to play in the data. Not all companies can afford a team like this.  In my last company we could not afford it. And companies cannot compete effectively if they cannot gain intelligence from their data!”

I asked her the challenges with the project and lessons learned. Kathy is a data genius, and there are very few folks like her. Here are some of the points that she made.

1. “What am I supposed to do?” The analytics tool needs to answer this question for the business user. It also needs to be very easy to use and understand.   This comment reminded me of another conversation with a BI user, and his pet peeves with his BI tools – “I do not know what question to ask!” He said. “Asking intelligent questions is most of the task!”
2. Tools for Business Users. Not R&D. Not IT. Kathy went on to comment about the dire need for tools for the Business Users. Companies are running very lean. The last rounds of corporate downsizing have been brutal. Typically, the first teams to go are the analysts and R&D teams. Hence, if the tools are hard to use, now they will never get used. Business leaders are getting smart and they want tools that their line-of-business folks can use. This can help them get value in the line of business.
3. Actionable Results. The old slice-and-dice data capability is not useful.  Ask may questions and I will answer. The business units are too busy and do not have time to “play in the data”. The tools need to intuitive and give you actionable tasks.
4. Like Google Analytics – The words “Analytics” is always associated with webs stats. That is the most commonly understood context of the word. However, there is far more data residing and building up in companies, than there is web traffic and search strings data. We need the same level of analytics, easy to use and intuitive tools for corporate data as we have for the web stats. Analytics means computing a relevant result and presenting easy to understand solutions. Like Google analytics for web traffic. Google analytics presents analytics on web stats; very domain specific, turn it on and off you go! Analytics for companies needs to be like that. Domain specific. Turn it on. Go Live. Get results. Get value!
5. Need to think like B2C apps. This was an important point. Why do business users have ugly, clunky software that is expensive to implement and difficult to use?  How can they be effective making those million dollar decisions? When the new wave of kids, who grew up with iPods and Facebook, enter the work force, will they throw out all the clunky enterprise apps? Absolutely!! Replace them with with easy to use, Facebook like apps.  Business analytics needs to be that easy to use.

Great opportunities! We need to build applications with the user in mind. What will business applications learn from iPod, Facebook, Linkedin, ……