NATURAL LANGUAGE BI IS NATURAL LANGUAGE THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE? 4 BI challenges Natural Language is solving
Page 03 Introduction Page 04 The solution to Unstructured Data Page 05 Democratizing access to data Page 06 Built from scratch to Mobile Page 09 Wizdee s Approach Page 07 Gaining Speed Page 08 Final Thoughts 02
natural language is the future For the last 30 years Business Intelligence has improved significantly. When it first started, it had a tool-centric nature and took at least a month to produce a report. It evolved, became more visual, faster as the average waiting time for a report dropped for a week and included predictive analysis. However it isn t enough. The BI industry keeps struggling to keep up with the pace of a digital world, where we produced data at speed of thought, where most data isn t structured and people have quick access to answers through easy to use consumer apps. Natural Language might just be the missing piece of this puzzle. It has gone beyond being a cool extra feature to be the perfect solution for four critical issues on the BI industry: - Unstructured data - User adoption - Speed - Mobile. I always tell people that the future of BI is Google; it s a text box where you put questions in and get answers. Steve Rimar, Enterprise Architect Qualcomm 03
THE SOLUTION TO UNSTRUCTURED DATA According to Gartner about 80% of a company s information assets is unstructured data. Normally these files are emails or a word processor document but video, images and audio files are also examples of unstructured information. Until now business intelligence vendors have been focused on technologies and approaches for accessing, analyzing and storing structured data. As companies add new data sources like social media, vendors need to rush to come up with solutions to analyze that data. Search engines are very flexible in handling any format of information, be it structured or unstructured. Natural Language can find patterns in, or interpret, unstructured information. This will enable organizations to take customer experience personalization to the next level and exploit new opportunities of growth. The digital universe comprised 4.4 trillion in 2013, but only 5% of it was actually being used. IDC 04
DEMOCRATIZING ACCESS TO DATA Business intelligence potential goes way beyond having a data scientist producing reports and creating dashboards for you. The ultimate goal is putting the right information, at the right time on the hands of decision makers, meaning everyone in your company. BI tools have failed measerably in this task, BI adoption rate is 21% (BI Scorecard) and it hasn t improved significantly in the last years. The main advantage of Natural Language BI is that it doesn t require IT skills or long training sessions for users to start exploring data. With interfaces similar to Google, users know instinctively what to do. This will democratize access to data, as users no longer will have to understand the peculiarities of the software or depend on the IT department to present reports, they can simply ask questions. Imagine a sales rep on their way to meet a client and being able to ask Client X orders in the last six months or decision makers during meetings being able to deeply explore their data Orders by product by region. 05
BUILT FROM SCRATCH FOR MOBILE BI mobile versions tend to be limited. Vendors are offering merely an adaptation of their drag-and-drop desktop interfaces to mobile devices with serious constrains that include only being able to check dashboards and reports previously created on desktop without the chance to edit deeply explore them. The truth is that we don t usually see language as a user interface, but that s what it is. Search for information by typing or using voice has become more natural than drag and drop. Natural Language BI mimics the kind of interaction that users normally have with smartphones. In a Google report regarding use of the voice search in smartphone, 41% of adults stated they use voice search every day. Natural Language increases BI accessibility not only in smartphones but very soon it will adapt to wearables, car computers and other devices following the Internet of Things trend. How will drag and drop work on these interfaces? A successfully deployed mobile BI increases adoption rate to 42%. 2014 BI Scorecard 06
GAINING SPEED Because BI tools are so complex, business users can t explore data by themselves and end up burying IT departments in reports requests. According to an Aberdeen Group, 6.1 days is the average waiting time for a report made using traditional BI tools. There is more data and more questions than an IT team can handle. When BI tools become easy to use, users can get the answers they need right away. The queue for reports will decrease as users will, at any time search for information and perform analytics by themselves, getting up to date insights. Users can explore data at the speed of thought: one question pops into their mind and in the next second they are dictating the query into their mobile phone and getting instant results. This is the kind of independence that Natural Language BI gives users, the power to endlessly explore their data, increasing the volume of data analyzed and decreasing the waiting time for business answers. 07
FINAL THOUGHTS The biggest changes on Business Intelligence industry have always been towards a more user friendly experience. No surprise when Natural language technology takes over to give BI user experience an extreme makeover. New and diverse data sources, speed, simplified user interfaces and easy access to data are some of the offers that Natural Language is bringing to the industry. The ultimate goal is creating personal analytics assistants that can keep a dialogue and understand users context. The future is promising and we just can t wait to see how natural language technology will shape the user experience of Business Intelligence. We are moving from a world where people behave the way computers work towards a world where computers work like people behave. Gartner 08
WIZDEE - NATURAL LANGUAGE BI In Wizdee, we believe that democratising access to data increases companies collective intelligence. Wizdee platform allows users to access their data by simply typing or speaking a query, using everyday language. Our Natural Language search engine translates the questions into SQL queries and automatically chooses the best visual form to present results. By simplifying access to data, the decision process becomes more agile, people start innovating and companies gain a competitive edge. You really are creating something that will change the daily lives of any number of companies. Camille Landau Strategy Consultant 09
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