Industry giants such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon and Oracle are the leaders in the global analytics market. They provide solutions that support businesses in their day-to-day work, which in the era of the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic takes on particular importance. Although the situation now seems less troublesome and changes towards a ‘new normal’ are on the horizon, many companies are still struggling with declining orders, supply chain disruptions or still need to adapt their business model to the changed requirements and how best to prepare for possible future crises. In the face of these changes, how are the Business Intelligence trends for 2022 shaping up? Will data analytics support businesses in their operations? This is discussed further in the article.

Master data management and data quality

Data published by BI-Survey shows that the critical trend in data analytics for 2022 will invariably be data governance and attention to their quality. This is because companies are constantly fighting against insufficient data quality as an obstacle to better use of data. And as we know, this, in turn, translates into ensuring the accuracy of analytical insights and making the right business decisions. Good quality data should be accurate, consistent, complete, timely, unique and verified. Therefore, data Quality Management (DQM) and data quality will remain crucial in 2022.

Collaborative BI

Social media channels, websites, or e-commerce sites have given companies the ability to quickly collect data about customers, their preferences, and needs. When such robust data is collected using advanced BI tools, we deal with collaborative BI.
Collaborative BI (collaborative business intelligence) is fast becoming the dominant trend for 2022, as it facilitates data collection, accurate decision-making and shared reporting for all participants in a given project, managers or executives. In addition, collaborative BI also supports joint problem solving and easy business discussions through Web 2.0 platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint.

Analytics Embedded

According to the Allied Market Research Report, the global embedded analytics market will reach $60 billion by 2023. By being ‘resident’ in native applications, Embedded analytics enables rapid analysis of data without the need to move it from one development environment to another. Thus, embedded analytics provides a digital workplace for simple data handlers, where data analysis takes place within the user’s natural workflow without switching to another application.

Embedded analytics offers a set of tightly integrated functions with existing applications (CRM, ERP, financial systems or information portals) that provide additional awareness, context or analytical capabilities to support decision-making. These tasks may require the aggregation of data from multiple systems or aggregated views, but the result of such analysis is more than just a centralised overview of information.

For example, by using embedded Power BI analytics, you can quickly and easily make clear reports, dashboards and analytics available to customers in your applications, and reduce developer resources by automating the monitoring, management and deployment of analytics while gaining complete control over Power BI service features and intelligent analytics. So no doubt embedded analytics will develop rapidly in 2022, giving companies a whole new way of looking at the data they have.

Widespread adoption of cloud and SaaS

In 2021, more and more companies were migrating to the hybrid or public cloud and starting to use Software as a Service (SaaS) plans for outsourcing BI services. The concept of BI in the cloud has become so popular that 95% of software vendors have advocated it, and 54% of enterprises consider BI in the cloud to be “very important” to their business. This is according to Dresner’s 2020 Cloud Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study.

There is no indication that this trend will change in 2022. Companies using cloud solutions have constant access to data – regardless of time and place. In addition, cloud providers care about data security and provide backup and recovery services. Notably, the cloud also offers easy scalability and flexibility of services, translating into work comfort and savings.

AI integration with BI and automation

AI technologies have infiltrated almost every aspect of business today – whether a recommendation engine, automated data preparation, augmented analytics or reports based on neuro-linguistic programming. It’s fair to say that AI has truly democratised Data Science operations – in an AI-driven world of analytics and BI, business users can query data to either validate machine-generated insights or accept them. This will lead in 2022 to the other replacement of humans in many sectors (financial services, manufacturing or healthcare) by intelligent computer systems.

The automation of data analysis will also become important. It offers a range of benefits to businesses, key among them being the processing speed, critical to business survival in difficult, pandemic times.

Using data for storytelling

In today’s competitive business world, in addition to data visualisation, sharing stories with other users – especially contractors and potential business partners – is an essential element. BI platforms include tools for storytelling and advanced visualisation, allowing their users to transform data into interactive reports and captivating stories. Data with a narrative built around it can attract the audience’s attention more effectively and produce much better results than mere numbers or boring statistics. This aspect is worth paying attention to in 2022.

BI & mobile analytics

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the shift towards mobile-friendly analytics and BI platforms. Now companies worldwide want their employees and customers to be able to access data and analytics from anywhere in the world. Figures published by Mordor Intelligence show that the mobile BI market will be worth more than $20 billion by 2024. In addition, it is estimated that mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, will account for over 72% of internet traffic. It, therefore, makes even more business sense to implement mobile-friendly BI platforms across your organisation in 2022.

What does the future hold for Business Intelligence in 2022?

Given the current changes in BI trends, it can be assumed that digital modes of communication such as social, mobile and web will become mainstream in business analytics. As a result, analytics conducted in a virtual environment will see massive growth over the next few years. The competitive advantage of companies, in turn, will be determined by the skilful implementation of systems supporting aggregation, segmentation and visualisation of data, such as Microsoft Power BI, taking into account the efficient management of data and its quality.