The Future of Business Intelligence

hese are not simple hypothetical questions, they are real cases of companies like McDonald's. In early 2019, it acquired the tech startup Dynamic Yield, dedicated to marketing solutions with machine learning, and after a few months it was already publicly reporting quantifiable benefits related to increased sales based on personalised purchase suggestions in the digital kiosks in its restaurants. And this is just one of the examples of the various initiatives developed since 2017 focused on the creation of a digital platform capable of extracting value from data.

Whether through similar acquisitions, in-house development, hiring specialist transformation services or monetising data, we see organisations across all sectors creating economic, social and environmental value through increased investment in business intelligence.

In a recent IDC study of nearly 100 CEOs of the world's largest organisations, over 80% of decision-makers cited that "using data in advanced decision models to enhance organisational performance and competitive advantage" was the top strategic priority for their organisation over the next five years. And IDC's data reflects exactly this. Specifically in 2019, organisations around the world invested more than €180 billion in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and Analytics (BDA) solutions.

Despite being the top strategic priority by decision-makers, most organisations do not know if they are getting the full value possible from investments in AI and BDA solutions. In fact IDC research indicates that most organisations use less than 10% of the data they own and very few are able to derive value from data external to the organisation. And while more than 50% of the world's large organisations indicate they are making investments in AI solutions, few are able to create all the value possible by processing data at scale, using governance models across the organisation, and with expertise and human talent capable of incorporating mental models and emotional intelligence into human-machine iteration.

In this context, if your organisation wants to create differentiating experiences for your customers, have resilient and agile processes, empower your people to the next level of collaboration and productivity, you must ensure that your organisation is underpinned by a new business intelligence, what IDC refers to as the "Future of Intelligence".

IDC defines the "Future of Intelligence" as an organisation's ability to learn, combined with its ability to synthesise the information needed to learn and apply the resulting insights at scale to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

AI will play a key role in IDC's vision for the "Future of Intelligence". Organisations around the world must assess their vision and transform people, processes, technology and data availability to unleash the full power of AI and thrive in an increasingly digital economy.

From IDC's recent predictions, I highlight below a few that are good examples of major changes coming as a result of greater use of AI:

• By 2022, the top two thousand global companies will invest more than €100 billion in AI and BDA solutions (on average €50 million per company) just for the purpose of improving customer data acquisition and analysis;
  
  
• By 2023, 45% of the top two thousand companies, B2B and B2C, will have context-based intelligent personalisation models using AI;
  
  
• By 2025, 60% of major brands and retailers will have AI systems in place to analyse and manage customers' emotional behaviour to improve NPS and sales conversion;
  
  
• By 2023, 65% of consumers will use voice and augmented reality on their smartphones to interact with brands and retailers;
  
  
• By 2024, 40% of consumers and businesses will use the AI-assisted "continuous commerce" model to purchase products and services;
  
  
• By 2024, AI will become the new human-machine user interface, redefining 50% of user experiences;
  
  
• By 2025, at least 90% of new enterprise applications will include AI functionality;
  
  
• By 2024, 50% of companies will use AI for intelligent automation of the supplier selection and contracting process;
  
  
• By 2022, 40% of B2B purchases will be made through AI-assisted digital commerce channels.

But what will differentiate those organisations with a higher business intelligence quotient will not simply be access to or ownership of more data and analytical capability vis-à-vis their competitors. It will be the ability of organisations to continually learn at scale, reflect and explain results based on this learning and ultimately adapt based on these results faster than the competition.

What is your strategy for increasing your organisation's intelligence quotient?