Oracle recently revised its business intelligence software to incorporate additional data sources into the existing software package. This expanded software enables users to acquire data directly from multiple sources, including social media sites, spreadsheets and Hadoop-based projects.
Such time- and labor-saving enhancements address a critical industry need and supports the growing trends of analyzing multiple data streams from different areas of business to achieve business intelligence project goals.
Various industry reports point to an increasing need for business intelligence software to incorporate and process data streams from disparate sources. CIO notes that both historical and current data from multiple sources is needed for accurate forecasting and better decision making. When a company has access to better data, it creates better analytics. With better analytics comes better business decision making and increased profits.
Incorporating multiple data streams can also help businesses improve forecasting, especially in the e-commerce industry. Information Week notes that combining Hadoop-based projects, which can handle massive quantities of external data, with internal spreadsheets and social media data is a boon for many companies. It enables detailed analysis of buying and sales trends to improve forecasting. Improved forecasting helps e-commerce companies adjust buying patterns and maintain appropriate levels of inventory, for example, which can help them fulfill orders in a timely fashion and save on warehousing and distribution costs.
Carnegie Mellon University describes the responsibilities of a business intelligence professional as including the ability to “wrangle” data from multiple sources such as sales, inventory, product and customer databases. Innovations like those offered by Oracle’s new sofware offer a time- and labor-saving solution for their projects. Rather than writing their own programs to analyze new data sources, they can rely on third-party software solutions to incorporate many data streams for analysis.
McKinsey & Company predicts that by 2018, there will be a shortage of workers trained in the deep analytical skills needed to perform complex business analytics tasks. They predict a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 business intelligence analysts, as well as a potential shortfall of 1.5 million managers in the field. Such a prediction offers students interested in data and analysis insight into potential career paths that may weather the viccisitudes of the economy and job market. By starting on an educational path now that can lead to a career in BI, students can take advantage of McKinsey’s predicted shortfall of skilled workers and prepare now to fill those gaps — and enter a growing career sector.
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