Data analytics and business intelligence are big buzzwords in today’s workplace, and the 2nd highest business function priority for IT leaders. With access to more data than ever, businesses can leverage analytics for a number of use cases, such as personalizing and optimizing the customer experience, streamlining operations, enhancing security, mitigating risk and accelerating business decisions. According to Finances online, 63% of companies say that improved efficiency is the top benefit of data analytics, while 57% say efficiency and more effective decision-making are key drivers.
With all these benefits up for grabs, companies are adopting data and analytics solutions rapidly. Globally, the data analytics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.57%, reaching nearly $97 billion by 2027.
However, organizations encounter numerous significant challenges around data and analytics that get in the way of accomplishing this goal. According to a recent IDG Research MarketPulse survey, 90% of enterprises reported running into problems related to their data analytic projects.
Legacy Systems Can't Keep Pace
Real-time analytics requires processing high volumes of data fast and with low latency. Legacy data and analytics tools are not designed to handle the immense amounts of data companies collect and store today, and do not integrate well with disparate data sources. Directus features an open and modular codebase that’s written in 100% JavaScript and leverages the power of Node.js and Vue.js 3 for blazing-fast performance and near-instant SQL query responses. It’s also architected to be completely configurable and extensible, so you’ll never hit a feature ceiling and can configure the solution to meet your exact needs.
Consolidating Data Across Silos
In the average enterprise, data volumes are growing at a rate of 63% per month across 400 or more sources. But according to an IDC survey, for most organizations, only 57% is put to use. Consolidating data across all multiple sources is not only challenging, it requires specialized data engineering skills to bring it all into a single source of truth for analysis. Then you have the problems of normalizing and deduplicating the data, and eliminating errors introduced by these often manual processes.
Delivered in the cloud or deployed locally, Directus makes it easy to consolidate, normalize and structure raw data from multiple sources – BI, IoT, SaaS metrics and more – for faster discovery, exploration and visualization. With zero or minimal coding, you can create bespoke dashboards for visualizing data using charts and other tools, to glean actionable insights at-a-glance.
Data Privacy and Security
Forty-nine percent of companies surveyed say data privacy and security programs are a barrier to data access. Increasingly stringent regulatory compliance requirements and security risks put pressure on organizations to safeguard their data – but unfortunately, this makes it more difficult to analyze holistically for actionable insights.
Directus layers on top of any SQL database, providing both REST and GraphQL APIs for immediate and secure access to your data. You can architect your data to fit your specific business needs, then use Directus to connect to it in minutes without moving or altering it in any way. No need to write SQL queries or rely on database administrators to help you access the data you need, although you can still write direct queries if you prefer. Plus, Directus Cloud has encryption at rest and in transit, to ensure your data is always protected.
Lack of Skilled Data Scientist
Nearly all (95%) of employers say that data science and analytics are skills that are hard to find. Yet making sense of unstructured, raw data requires extensive expertise. Due to a shortage of skilled data scientists, many companies must wait weeks or months for analysis and insights, and by then, opportunities to apply them have likely passed.
Directus enables users to browse, visualize and manage any type of data – content, customer records, inventory, financials, geospatial and temporal data, digital assets and more – with the ability to easily search, filter, sort and bookmark the data. These capabilities democratize data access, enabling both technical and non-technical users alike to quickly get the information they need, without relying on highly skilled data scientists.
Converting Big Data into Insights
Even when all the stars align – a company has sufficient data science resources and are able to provide secure access to unified data from multiple sources – the ability to share and leverage meaningful insights can be extremely limited. Without self-service capabilities that enable non-technical business users to access data analytics and business intelligence, the insights produced will be of little help to the business. Among the Data and Analytics trends Gartner identifies in its recent report, prioritizing data literacy is key. This means making insights relevant and accessible to decision makers with context-driven analytics.
Directus gives all users control over how they visualize their data – no coding necessary. Both technical and non-technical users can easily create custom dashboards using Directus Insights to visualize their data in a variety of layouts – maps, charts, calendars, tables and more – for rapid, actionable insights that are easy to share across the organization.
Unlock the Power of Your Data
According to Gartner’s report, organizations that adopt cloud analytics solutions can gain a competitive advantage with analytics and BI. It’s time to start leveraging the vast amounts of data available to your organization for data and analytics, and with Directus, it’s easier than ever. Learn how Directus uses database introspection and abstraction along with our API and no-code App to provide instant access to all your company data, while reducing risk and operational overhead.
Get started with using Directus today with our Directus Cloud offering.