2021 Data Analytics Trends & Predictions From Inorbis

Marcel Verger, Co-founder, InOrbis Analytics

We are Inorbis Analytics, a team of experts & passionate in the development of analytical solutions with a lot of expertise in various business sectors and technologies. Our mission is improve in decision processes in 5 areas of expertise for example, data driven management, performance management, data governance, big data & advanced analytics, business intelligence, in order to deliver end to end analytical capabilities.

After a year like no other, we have seen rapid and radical changes in organizations all around the world. In matter of weeks, companies had to learn how to telework, restaurants had to digitalize their service and schools had gone online, that’s without talking about the rapid transformation of the health and pharmaceutical industries.

2020 was not about creating new and disruptive data technologies but about the spectacular acceleration of the trends that had already started in the last few years. In many cases, the 5-year digital transformation plan of a company was drastically adapted and executed in less than 3 months. There are 3 trends that deserve special attention: Cloud adoption, Process Automation (RPA) and AI democratization

CLOUD ADOPTION

Consolidation of one of the biggest trends in the last years due to its very well-known characteristics like scalability, flexibility, security or low investment entrance, but there is another characteristic that we would like to point out:

Analytics Service Architecture – Today, most vendors offer subscription-based models and customers are no longer locked-in to technologies for long periods. Now customers have the flexibility to change not-relevant technologies and move quickly to new shiny independent technologies with low effort, this has enabled the thrive of modern architectures built on a mix of several different technologies and vendors

Besides the traditional cloud based giants (Azure, AWS, Google Cloud) that offer all kind of solutions for analytics, there are some specific niche vendors that are truly game changers in the use of analytics in cloud environments, such as Snowflake for Analytical Databases or Matillion for ETL processing.

PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA)

Most of the organizations and processes are not lean, optimized or clean and digital transformation requires efficiency, speed and democratization. Organizations that don’t focus on improve this characteristics, will be left behind in the market. For example, according to several experts, RPA can save up to 70% over outsourcing and many companies have started to move in this direction.

Pandemic accelerated investments in various forms of business process but in a rush to push out automation, several failures and lack of tangible results may occur. In order to prevent this, a better planning and testing before deploying the project or exposing it to employees is needed. One of the best ways to do this is the use of process mining which is becoming one of the most interesting and game changer technologies with players like PAFNow or Celonis.

AI DEMOCRATIZATION

Long time since AI was exclusive for big multinationals, now AI is at reach for most of the companies in the world. Also, AI is no longer used as a single solution for a single specific problem but democratization include customers, business partners, business executives, salespeople or assembly line workers.

Right now, most of AI projects in organizations end up facing problems regarding maintainability, scalability, governance and trust. For example, COVID-19 pandemic has raised specific concerns about how to apply data ethics when collecting, using and sharing data about employees and the health of individuals.

Due to all this, there are 3 areas where AI democratization will augment its focus this year: AI corporate strategy, Data Governance and Responsible AI.

2021 is starting, fasten your seatbelts and enjoy the ride!