2015: Faster Forward

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15 January 2015

As for ERP and in truth all business systems, they were originally for management, control and recording with the results then available for analysis in reports and spreadsheets There is really no reason why the software should not now be designed from the analysis backwards, so long as the other core functions are unimpaired. When you add in key elements like governance and compliance and auditability, it would make perfect sense.

3D printer concept

We are experiencing the inevitable early stage hype about 3D printing, which is terrific but with myriad limitations

The companion technologies of analytics are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We have been making enormous strides in developing and applying a widening range of techniques such as pattern analysis and recognition, inference by probability and decision trees. Automated decision making is already a force in systems from financial services to marketing to manufacturing processes to traffic control. All of this progress is stimulated and made possible by access to ever greater computing power, often through the cloud, at economic pricing.

Because this is smart and advanced technology the speed of general uptake will not be like mobile apps or even editions of Microsoft and other leading vendors’ products. High end clients will accelerate investment in bespoke analytical systems. In financial services risk management, for example, for all practical purposes analytics are mandatory today. The academic and research world has been and still is far ahead of the commercial applications — think Human Genome Project, CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, meteorology, astrophysics plus GCHQ and the NSA. This is the rarefied world of Extreme Data. On the other hand, Google is no slouch in this regard and millions of punters use it every day.

But permeation to the lower strata of applications is continuing rapidly. Today it is at the top end of ERP and CRM and market research. Tomorrow may see analytics apps. But what we are already seeing — and it is certain to expand — is Analytics-as-a-Service. Given the range of skills demanded by top level analytics, the investment in the systems and, very often, the occasional nature of the demand, analytics services make sense. It is certainly an open field for co-opetition in specific sectors, along the lines of market research in retail, automotive and other industries.

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