The 5 hottest data & analytics trends for 2023

Creating value from data plays a fundamental role for many companies in order to remain competitive. More and more business strategies are based on increased use of data. A prerequisite for implementing such a strategy is a high-quality data pool. In practice, however, companies often struggle with insufficient data quality. The BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023 has identified which topics are relevant for companies to overcome the challenges they face with regard to data quality, data management and data usage.

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Trend #1: Master Data/Data Quality Management

If you want to base your business decisions on data, you need to ensure that the data is accurate and consistent. This simple logic explains why companies continue to rank master data and data quality management as the most important topic in data & analytics. Predictive models can only make correct predictions if they have been trained with the right data. Harmonized master data is a prerequisite for consistent reporting and data-driven operations. In the digital world, companies are more dependent than ever on high-quality data to establish new services and products in the market.

Trend #2: Data-Driven Culture

What makes data-driven companies stand out? They create a reliable data basis for as many decisions and processes as possible. In data-driven companies, data acts as a key driver for successful decisions, high process efficiency and achieving competitive advantage.

To become a data-driven company, it is not enough to invest in the appropriate technologies. Rather, it requires a culture in which all employees maintain an open approach and constant exchange with regard to data. Only in this way will it be possible to make comprehensive use of data and analyses throughout the entire company.

Trend #3: Data Governance

Data governance provides a cross-system and cross-departmental view of the data in the company. It represents an important control mechanism for the data strategy by creating suitable guidelines and binding framework conditions for handling data as well as for its creation and maintenance. The data strategy in turn controls the use of data in all business processes in order to increase efficiency and promote innovation. Establishing functioning data governance requires persistence – and a conscious decision by management as to how data should be used in the company.

Trend #4: Data Discovery/Visualization

In many companies, data discovery is currently high on the to-do list. Data discovery helps users identify specific patterns, clusters and trends in data using self-service capabilities. Advanced analytics methods are used to examine the data sets. The results and insights are then processed in dashboards and analysis applications. Automatically generated insights play an important role for data discovery, as they are able to identify hidden patterns and deviations and point them out to users.

Trend #5: Self-Service Analytics

The need for self-service capabilities in data & analytics remains high. Meanwhile, companies are focusing less on providing self-services to meet the needs of individual departments. Instead, they are striving to democratize data access throughout the company. The associated goals: to create analyses and reports as efficiently as possible and to ensure consistent results.

Self-service BI empowers business users to answer urgent questions on their own and inform decision makers based on reliable facts. Intuitive visualizations, reports, and dashboards are used to clearly communicate insights and results. However, the move toward greater business department autonomy does not mean that IT and data specialists are no longer needed. They still play an important role in providing and monitoring the right environment for business users.

Conclusion: High data quality for better business decisions

The five hottest trends from the BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023 provide the foundation for businesses to manage and use their data assets effectively. Companies are undoubtedly aware of the importance of high-quality data. They are pursuing the goal of not only collecting as much data as possible, but also actively applying it to improve their business decisions and ensure lasting corporate success.