The business world is increasingly mobile, and if organizations don’t provide easy access to data analytics capabilities for mobile users, they might be missing out on huge opportunities.
A recent report on mobile analytics and business intelligence (BI) by Ventana Research noted that for analytics to be effective, they need to be available to line-of-business personnel as needed in their normal course of conducting business.
Today, that means “providing rich mobile access to analytics to support a mobile workforce seeking to conduct business in any location at any time,” the report said. “Workers today expect these mobile capabilities, which means organizations must make choices to provide analytics and BI platforms that can deliver them.”
Providing analytics on small devices can be a challenge. But the report said screen resolution is improving, and larger devices such as tablets can support nearly any type of functionality that mobile personnel might need.
These needs are substantial, the report said with more than two-fifths of organizations studies in the report saying it is important or very important to be able to address data preparation tasks on mobile devices.
Analytics vendors are divided in their approach to providing mobile capabilities, the report said. Some have invested in developing applications that are native to the two platforms that dominate the mobile market, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system.
The small form factor of mobile devices, especially smartphones, has helped push the boundaries on ease of use, the report said.
“Users can’t be expected to make multiple selections and accomplish complex interactions using a small display, so vendors have simplified how tasks are performed,” the report said.
