People Data Changes Everything
People Data Changes Everything
June 4, 2007: According to analyst firm S2 Intelligence, Australian businesses in the future will rely heavily on the superior use of data, just as information available in the public domain is routinely used by police and security agencies to generate risk profiles on citizens.
Within ten years, S2 Intelligence believes a variety of online services will change the way individuals are profiled and analysed. By 2010, S2 Intelligence predicts a variety of free online services will be available to produce detailed social profiles on any individuals. By 2012 services will extend out to offering online conflict of interest detection for legal disputes, company acquisitions and employment.
By 2016, S2 Intelligence suggests that law enforcement and security agencies will have their hand on enough data to be able to routinely use software to generate risk profiles of individual citizens.
Although some might consider the details a little scary, S2 Intelligence says this technological innovation will provide the means for Australian workplaces to evolve their practices and talent. Within ten years, S2 Intelligence says we can expect to see senior executives routinely accessing computer analytics on the fly, detailed performance measurement applied to people and processes and human resource metrics indicating where training and reporting structures are inefficient.
“The next ten years will see businesses mine a whole new world of audio, video, spatial and social network information that they have never had access to before,” says McCabe. “As well as commercial opportunity, this will create new human, social and cultural challenges.”
“Business analytics will become an enterprise-wide phenomenon where all types of managers and knowledge workers benefit from richer methods of analysing digital information,” says Bruce McCabe, author of the report entitled ‘the Future of Business Analytics.”
“Rolls and workplace routines will everywhere need to adapt to accommodate and exploit new capabilities.”
Sponsored by Business Objects Australia, S2 Intelligence based their findings on 700 in-depth interviews with IT practitioners, technology leaders and business executives as well as relevant published, academic materials.
Business Objects refer to the findings as an aspect of the ‘Business Intelligence 2.0 landscape,” which is already revolutionising the way people and organisations intelligently act on the data they can access.
“One of the greatest changes we will see is access for all employees to the information they need to make intelligent decisions,” says Rob Wells, managing director at Business Objects ANZ. “Companies in Australia and New Zealand today are recognising the tremendous transformational potential in providing business intelligence to all employees, not just the privileged few at the executive level.”
By 2017, S2 Intelligence says this ‘BI 2.0 landscape’ will see senior executives accessing computer analysis distilled into simple, one line recommendations such as ‘initiate a clearance sale to run down inventory on Product A.’ Overall, these executives will benefit from the ability to drill down on specific metrics and make more confident decisions on how to handle them.