Keeping up with the changing business landscape is a challenge that all businesses are facing. Remaining competitive requires continually optimizing processes and fine-tuning the customer experience. The key to this, as every organization now knows, is through real-time insights gained from effective data analysis.

Data and analytics spend tops all other software investments in 73% of organizations surveyed for a recently released Alteryx-commissioned IDC InfoBrief. However, 93% of those organizations are not obtaining the results expected from that spend because they are not utilizing the analytics skills of their employees. This is creating a widening analytics gap between companies where data and analytics access has been democratized and those where it has not.

“The data was really clear: Organizations that have a higher percentage of their workforce using analytics are enjoying a much higher return from their analytic investment,” said Alan Jacobson, chief data and analytics officer at Alteryx Inc. “It’s not about hiring two double Ph.D. statisticians from Oxford; it really is how widely you can bring your workforce on this journey.”

Jacobson spoke during a session on “Accelerating Analytics Maturity to Win,” part of the “Democratizing Analytics Across the Enterprise” event, an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. The event, which was moderated by theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin, focused on the results of the Alteryx-commissioned IDC InfoBrief: “Four Ways to Unlock Transformative Business Outcomes From Analytics Investments: A Global Survey on the Impacts of People, Data, and Analytics Automation on ROI.” (* Disclosure below.)

Every employee should participate in the data and analytics process

Also speaking during the event was Jason Klein, product marketing director at Alteryx Inc. In his session on “Maximizing Analytics ROI,” Klein reviewed the results of the IDC InfoBrief and described the four practical ways in which companies can improve their analytics proficiency.

“In this research, we developed a framework of enterprise analytics proficiency that helps organizations reap greater benefits from their investments,” Klein stated.

The framework was created by reviewing the behaviors of organizations that gained a higher ROI from their investment in analytics, and the key indicator was a company’s ability to make data and analytics equally accessible to all employees.

“Everyone, regardless of skill level, should be able to participate in the data and analytics process and drive value,” Klein said.

The final session gave insight into data and analytics democratization from the customer’s point of view. Paula Hansen (pictured, left), president and chief revenue officer of Alteryx Inc., and Jacqui Van der Leij-Greyling (pictured, right), global head of tax technology at eBay Inc., joined forces to describe how eBay became one of the 7% of organizations in the survey that are gaining top ROI on their data and analytics investments.

“We knew we couldn’t wait for all our data to be centralized until we actually start using the data or started automating and becoming more effective,” Van der Leij-Greyling stated during the session. “So we really started very, very actively embedding analytics in our people and our data and our processes.”

eBay’s not-so-secret weapon is the Alteryx Analytics Cloud, which was designed to democratize analytics access and empower all employees, regardless of job function or skill set.

“It operates in a multicloud world and really helps across all sizes of data sets to blend, cleanse, shape, analyze and report out so that we can break down data silos across the enterprise and drive real business outcomes as a result of unlocking the potential of data,” Hansen stated.

Here’s the complete “Democratizing Analytics Across the Enterprise” event video.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Democratizing Analytics Across the Enterprise” event. Neither Alteryx Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE