Skip to main content

Gartner: Advanced Analytics Is a Top Business Priority

Gartner, Inc. said advanced analytics is a top business priority, fueled by the need to make advanced analysis accessible to more users and broaden the insight into the business. Advanced analytics is the fastest-growing segment of the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market and surpassed $1 billion in 2013.

"While advanced analytics have existed for over 20 years, big data has accelerated interest in the market and its position in the business," said Alexander Linden, Research Director at Gartner. "Rather than being the domain of a few select groups (for example, marketing, risk), many more business functions now have a legitimate interest in this capability to help foster better decision making and improved business outcomes."

IT and business leaders must expand their efforts to move their organizations from using only traditional BI that addresses descriptive analysis (what happened) to advanced analytics, which complements by answering "why", "what will happen" and "how we can address it".


Source: Gartner (October 2014)

"While basic analytics provide a general summary of data, advanced analytics deliver deeper data knowledge and granular data analysis," added Linden. The rewards of data-driven decision making can be a powerful boost to business outcomes. However, creating value from data requires a range of talents, from data integration and preparation, to architecting specialized computing/database environments, to data mining and intelligent algorithms. "Extracting value out of data is not a trivial task," said Linden. "One of the key elements of any such 'making sense out of data' program is the people, who must have the right skills and capabilities."

Data scientists in the organization support big data initiatives for which the No. 1 use case is enhancing customer experience. According to Gartner's latest global big data survey conducted in 2014, 68 per cent of respondents said that they use big data to enhance their customer experience. This is the third year customer experience has been a top business problem to address.

"Data scientists are not business analysts," said Linden. "They are professionals with the capability to derive mathematical models from data to reap clear and hard-hitting business benefits. They need to network well across different business units and work at the intersection of business goals, constraints, processes, available data and analytical possibilities."

Ultimately, data science is inevitable as it can help extract various kinds of knowledge from data, for example, how to acquire new customers (database marketing), how to do more cross-selling (via propensity-to-purchase modeling), information on route optimization, drug design and demand or failure prediction.

"Whether an organization calls the role data scientist or something else, individuals (or teams of professionals) with these core skills and soft skills will prove essential in maximizing the realized value of your information assets, and discovering opportunities for enhanced business performance and competitive advantage," said Linden.

About Gartner's Global Big Data Survey: The Gartner survey of 302 Gartner Research Circle members worldwide, which was conducted in June 2014, was designed to explore organizations' technology investment plans relating to big data, stages of big data adoption, business problems solved data, technology and challenges and compare the results with those from previous years.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Gartner: Advanced Analytics Is a Top Business Priority

Gartner, Inc. said advanced analytics is a top business priority, fueled by the need to make advanced analysis accessible to more users and broaden the insight into the business. Advanced analytics is the fastest-growing segment of the business intelligence (BI) and analytics software market and surpassed $1 billion in 2013.

"While advanced analytics have existed for over 20 years, big data has accelerated interest in the market and its position in the business," said Alexander Linden, Research Director at Gartner. "Rather than being the domain of a few select groups (for example, marketing, risk), many more business functions now have a legitimate interest in this capability to help foster better decision making and improved business outcomes."

IT and business leaders must expand their efforts to move their organizations from using only traditional BI that addresses descriptive analysis (what happened) to advanced analytics, which complements by answering "why", "what will happen" and "how we can address it".


Source: Gartner (October 2014)

"While basic analytics provide a general summary of data, advanced analytics deliver deeper data knowledge and granular data analysis," added Linden. The rewards of data-driven decision making can be a powerful boost to business outcomes. However, creating value from data requires a range of talents, from data integration and preparation, to architecting specialized computing/database environments, to data mining and intelligent algorithms. "Extracting value out of data is not a trivial task," said Linden. "One of the key elements of any such 'making sense out of data' program is the people, who must have the right skills and capabilities."

Data scientists in the organization support big data initiatives for which the No. 1 use case is enhancing customer experience. According to Gartner's latest global big data survey conducted in 2014, 68 per cent of respondents said that they use big data to enhance their customer experience. This is the third year customer experience has been a top business problem to address.

"Data scientists are not business analysts," said Linden. "They are professionals with the capability to derive mathematical models from data to reap clear and hard-hitting business benefits. They need to network well across different business units and work at the intersection of business goals, constraints, processes, available data and analytical possibilities."

Ultimately, data science is inevitable as it can help extract various kinds of knowledge from data, for example, how to acquire new customers (database marketing), how to do more cross-selling (via propensity-to-purchase modeling), information on route optimization, drug design and demand or failure prediction.

"Whether an organization calls the role data scientist or something else, individuals (or teams of professionals) with these core skills and soft skills will prove essential in maximizing the realized value of your information assets, and discovering opportunities for enhanced business performance and competitive advantage," said Linden.

About Gartner's Global Big Data Survey: The Gartner survey of 302 Gartner Research Circle members worldwide, which was conducted in June 2014, was designed to explore organizations' technology investment plans relating to big data, stages of big data adoption, business problems solved data, technology and challenges and compare the results with those from previous years.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...