The desire to analyze data that will drive insights and competitive differentiation is older than computing itself. Digitization just speeded things up. Richard Miller Devens used the term “business intelligence” as far back as 1865. The LEO computer was calculating optimal inventory deliveries based on shop performance and generating management reports for the Lyons’ tea rooms chain from 1951. And the very first edition of CIO magazine, published in 1987, included an editorial on “an increasing cadre of increasingly demanding customers seeking faster access to information”.Fast-forward to today, and the dreary meme of “data is the new oil” that must be chanted at every tech conference by rule of law. The power of data is better understood than ever, but for many, harnessing data, checking its quality, and applying context to assist decision-making remains challenging. CIOs report fragmentation, slowness and silos, even as digital transformation has been accelerated by the pandemic. But there is cause for optimism, in the form of broad modern data pipelines that drive activity and allow what Qlik calls “Active Intelligence” – the ability to act on reliable data with a rich supporting fabric of context and collaboration to support the right decisions and take informed actions in the right moment. By assembling joined-up processes, companies are following the path from uncovering data to delivering it where it needs to go, governing it through data catalogs, understanding it, augmenting it, and putting it to use via context-sensitive alerts and actions taken in close to real time.To read this article in full, please click her
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