BI 4.0
Technological progress often occurs incrementally, through changes so small we don’t even see a revolution until it’s already permeated the landscape. In other cases, growth happens in waves: vigorous and sweeping. The next wave of business intelligence is already upon us, and looking ahead allows businesses an immediate opportunity to prepare for what’s to come in BI 4.0.
Looking Back
BI 4.0 builds on the momentum of data-driven solutions that have come before it, gradually giving management deeper insights into every facet of their organizations’ operations and strategy. In the beginning there was 1.0, which was mainly composed of on-premise platforms and databases that were used to create reports based on specific needs of business leaders.
In the second generation, platforms moved onto the cloud and developed the capacity to work with big data. The 3.0 wave is considered to comprise real-time dashboards and mobile integrations that empower businesses to leverage data themselves (so called self-service BI). In many ways, that growth still continues, though there are new developments rapidly arising.
The New Generation
The stand-out feature of BI 4.0 is predictive and cognitive analytics built into the platforms themselves, generating unprecedented insight at scale. Utilizing the wealth of information made possible by the Internet of Things (IoT), new cognitive intelligence technologies can actively analyze data signals from multiple sources, including those that aren’t text based. This computing provides deep insights that guide business decisions of the future, all in real time.
Utilization
The technologies driving BI 4.0 are transformative in that consumers receive information that is not just descriptive or diagnostic, but actively predicts future concerns, prescribes solutions, and cognitively approaches data as humans would. This isn’t to say that each of those steps aren’t important per se: in fact, making business decisions often follows a roadmap from answering the most basic questions, to much deeper inquiries.
4.0 technologies allow for higher-level business functions to be powered by more information, and is inspiring greater confidence in the analytics that BI can provide. This naturally drives mass adoption of these cutting-edge technologies, and facilitates the effective execution of knowledge workers’ day-to-day activities.
