Art of BI: 5 Reasons Why Cloud Analytics Should Be the Future of Your Business

In our information-driven world, the organizations that can extract the best insights from their data are the ones that are best positioned for success. To accomplish this, businesses are increasingly using cloud analytics tools to obtain these insights.

According to a study by BARC and Eckerson Group, 78 percent of respondents said that their company planned to increase its use of cloud business intelligence (BI) tools in the near future.

With trends clearly favoring the cloud, it’s prudent to take a look at why so many companies are moving in the same direction. Here’s a look at five of the top financial and strategic reasons why cloud analytics make sense for your organization.

1. Robust Platform

Perhaps the biggest challenge for business analytics is assembling all the data in the first place. With so many data sources in the cloud, it makes little sense to perform extra work by bringing that data on-premises. Not only does a cloud analytics platform give you the same capabilities as an on-premises installation, but it’s also much simpler to blend, merge, process, clean, and store your data.

2. Faster Time-to-Value

The great thing about cloud analytics is that you already have everything you need – you just have to connect the dots. Your data, models, and infrastructure are already in place, but you may be struggling to find the combination that works best for your business. Top cloud analytics solutions can give you guidance on how to consolidate your master data management and analytics so that you can have the most up to date and available data for your applications. With cloud analytics, you’ll get up and running faster since there’s no hardware or installation required, and you’ll start seeing results sooner.

3. Lower Costs

Cloud analytics platforms typically have a much lower upfront cost because they don’t require pricey capital investments just to get the software deployed. When moving to the cloud, support and maintenance are out of your hands, giving you significant savings on your IT budget. What’s more, by performing upgrades in place, cloud analytics solutions don’t require you to go through expensive, frustrating downtime just to have access to the software’s latest version.

4. Better Collaboration

On-premises analytics solutions often create disconnected teams that resort to slow, inaccurate manual processes like emails and spreadsheets. Communication is hampered, and insights aren’t always shared among all those who could benefit. Moving your analytics and real-time applications to the cloud means that all team members can access the platform from anywhere at any time and with a variety of computers and mobile devices. Even better, information collected or processed by different groups, like the sales or marketing departments, can be instantly propagated throughout the team and shared with other teams and individuals.

5. Easier Adoption

These days, cloud analytics applications are close replicas of their on-premises counterparts, which means that they offer a very similar user experience. If you’re already using an on-premises analytics application with a cloud equivalent, your users will likely easily adapt to it without needing too much training. In addition, cloud applications can be managed through a single user account, so users don’t have to manage multiple user accounts for different applications.

Final Thoughts

The advantages above are hardly the only benefits that a cloud migration can provide you. Of course, cloud-based analytics solutions bring with them all the traditional benefits of the cloud: reduced support and maintenance obligations, improved scalability and flexibility, better data security and privacy, and more. Learn more about how cloud analytics can assist your business in Datavail’s new white paper, Packing the Essentials for Your Journey to Cloud Analytics.