Although the use of data in corporate decision making is on the rise, many businesses still struggle to gain meaningful insights from their data.
Currently, 98% of big data decision makers say their company either strongly or somewhat encourages employees to base business decisions on data and evidence, according to a survey by Attivio. Yet 64% say that internal bottlenecks between the IT and business units prevent data from being accessed efficiently, and more than a third say it takes a day or more to access big data sources for an analysis.
Additionally, finds McKinsey, many companies struggle with analytics programs due to the difficulty of finding and retaining talent. Specifically, respondents to McKinsey’s survey said that the three most difficult types of talent to retain and attract are business users with analytics skill sets, data scientists or engineers, and executive leaders for data and analytics departments.
Reasons for Optimism
Overcoming these gaps in talent and processes can be difficult, but better training and technology can help. Twice as many companies say they would train employees rather than hire for analytics skills, according to a 2013 American Management Association and i4cp study, so perhaps as more employees receive training, they will be able to better derive insights from data.
Looking ahead, it does appear that data skills will become more commonplace. 67% of respondents to the Attivio survey said that analytics skills needed to leverage big data for business decisions would become as prevalent as word processing skills are today. And in terms of being able to access data efficiently, 61% said it would become as easy as a Google search.
Putting Technology to Work
With better analytics software rolling out in a number of fields ranging from insurance to sports, companies have greater abilities to derive insights from data automatically, which can cut out some of the pain points that businesses currently face.
For energy management, energy analytics software (EAS) provides companies with both high-quality data and the ability to make sense of it. A utility bill, for instance, does contain some data on costs, but there’s no clear determination of what’s behind that cost. EAS, on the other hand, collects and analyzes real-time and historical energy data throughout the company to provide detailed insight into areas such as what business processes drive energy costs and what conservation measures would most effectively lower bills without disrupting the business.
EAS also provides results quickly. A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study on 28 sites that deployed this software found that they saved an average of 17% in the first year alone. By the ninth year of using this software, the average savings reached 47%. And EAS surpassed the financial savings of Benchmarking, Building Automation Systems and Fault Detection and Diagnostics.
How Consultants Can Help
Businesses can clearly benefit from deriving better insights from their data, and many of the enterprise consulting firms they might already be working with on strategy are also starting to offer Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS). This software fills the gaps many companies face around managing analytics technology and acquiring and retaining talent, because it’s easily accessible from any location rather than a siloed legacy data system and it does much of the analysis automatically.
And aside from helping with energy management, AaaS can help in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, financial services and more.
The sooner companies take advantage of this new technology, the sooner they’ll be able to achieve cost savings without requiring a Herculean effort.
Request a complimentary energy efficiency assessment to find out how Artis Energy’s RTIS® energy analytics platform can provide you with the visibility and insight to transform energy from a fixed cost into a distinct competitive advantage.