Disruptive Analytics for Data Leaders of Tomorrow
Most data leaders know they aren’t getting enough out of their data.
Years of digitization have seen steady accumulations of data that are
getting more complex. Yet, increasingly dependent on data engineers
and data scientists, the autonomy of executives and business users
to drive decisions from this data has plateaued. With this, only a small
proportion of all data collected truly delivers value today.
This is supported by Forrester, who reports anecdotal evidence
indicating that no more than 20% of enterprise decision-makers are
using enterprise BI applications hands on: “The other 80% still rely
on their data and analytics colleagues to find the data, perform the
analysis, and present the finding in PowerPoint.”1
7% Only 7% of data and analytics decision-makers report advanced insights-driven
business capabilities in their companies.2
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https://www.forrester.com/report/the-future-of-business-intelligence/RES177133
1 Push data analytics to the edge of your organization
A change in approach is needed to better connect the process of
transformation with the outcomes businesses need—easier access
to insights for users, wherever they are in the organization. For data
leaders to modernize their data and analytics strategy in this way,
our experts recommend focusing on two key areas: data creativity
and data horsepower.
This powerplay combination will set the enterprise foundation for
delivering trusted insights to users at the edges of an organization,
accessed via personalized applications and enriched with new,
augmented analytics experiences.
DATA
CREATIVITY
DATA
HORSEPOWER
https://www.forrester.com/report/the-future-of-business-intelligence/RES177133
Data creativity
From compelling stories to data infusion

Data creativity means pushing your analytics beyond its current limits Recommended creativity strategies for data leaders include:
to deliver greater value to the business. It’s about thinking outside the
box to imagine and then build applications that resonate with users. Dynamic workspaces

In practice, data leaders should be seeking to ensure that applications
tell compelling stories through stunning data layouts, deliver
information with impact embedded in the workflows users are most
familiar with, and combined with augmented analytics, will accelerate
adoption and increase data literacy.
Success means infusing data into decisions at all levels, ultimately
enhancing business outcomes and the bottom line.
Push beyond dashboards to design and deploy personalized,
actionable data experiences for any and every user across the
organization. Tailor both the content and appearance of analytics
applications based on the requirements of sales, executive leadership,
management or marketing — all with no-code development
and while maintaining centralized control.
Data infusion

4x
To elevate decision-making and enhance customer experiences,
Companies that achieve better go beyond data visualization and reporting to embed analytics
scale and value from analytics across existing applications or websites. And do so without
increasing complexity, by managing and maintaining content
are 4x more likely to spend
within your analytics platform.
more to embed analytics in
the organization’s cultural
Proactive answers
and operational DNA. 3

Take data infusion to the next level by creating intelligent user

experiences in which users have data come to them, through zero-
3
McKinsey, The Path to True Transformation click insights, in the applications they use every day.

2 Data creativity
Data horsepower
The foundation of analytics excellence
A single, worldwide source of truth is a prerequisite for scaling trusted
analytics across the globe. Therefore, a modern and transformative
analytics strategy starts with laying the building blocks of data
governance. This is the infrastructure of your data horsepower layer,
upon which applications can be built, maintained and optimized to
deliver insights to the edge of the business, ensuring both sustained
value and competitive advantage.
Key requirements include the ability to maintain performance at
enterprise scale and the ability to maintain the security and integrity
of your data. This allows users to access trusted enterprise data and
quickly build reports and visualizations, blending information from
multiple systems. With access to the kind of highly governed data from
an effective deployment, users can produce actionable intelligence
from structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data warehouses,
enterprise directories, and other enterprise data assets.
3 Data horsepower
Recommended data horsepower strategies for
data leaders include: ABSOLUTE DATA INTEGRITY IN ACTION
Incoming regulatory changes meant a major retail bank
Absolute Data Integrity needed to update a key metric calculation. Instead of
requiring a massive overhaul of its reporting, as initially
Design the building blocks—that is the object schemas and data feared, the master admin only needed to change the
models— in a reusable way that maintains a single version of truth calculation once in order to update every report across the
across all operations, and at global scale. The Platform Semantic company. Thanks to the bank’s Platform Semantic Graph,
Graph approach is a powerful metadata model of secure relationships it took just 15 minutes to get compliant.
between data. The object-oriented semantic layer allows data
governance to be managed centrally. Each new dashboard inherits
the security profile of the pre-existing elements, reducing the
potential for costly errors. Because the data can be trusted it becomes
actionable, enabling businesses to operate with confidence.
Secure by Design
Integrate security from day one and apply specific access controls.
Organizations need a platform that evolves with a changing
security landscape and has this understanding integrated into
every product decision. Further, they must be able to ensure all
users have access only to the content they need, when they need
it, through a strong governance model.
It takes more than pretty dashboards
to drive great businesses
To truly elevate and accelerate decision-making, businesses must
ease their reliance on analysts to catch trends and discover
insights, by instead delivering this combination of analytics
capabilities to deliver insights with impact to users at the edges
of the organization.
We believe the future lies in empowerment through data, enabling
businesses to make decisions based on trusted facts rather than
intuition. Investments in advanced augmented analytics will pave
the way to developing a deeper understanding of data, elevating it
at specific moments to drive the right action at the right time.
4 It takes more than pretty dashboards to drive great businesses
We’ve started this augmented journey with features that capitalize
on advanced machine learning in the background, detecting trends
and outliers based on unique business KPIs, and flagging them
directly to the senior executives, managers or frontline workers that
need to see them, in real time.
Achieving true business transformation starts by evolving your
analytics strategy to push data to the edges of the organization.
With advanced focus and infusion of data into daily decisions, global
organizations can propel internal innovation across products and
services to disrupt business as usual.
About MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy is an analytics company that believes data
is at the core of disruption. We’re focused on innovation,
not solely for our own product, but for our customers
and partners as well. That’s why we provide the ultimate
analytics platform with unmatched data horsepower and
the data creativity to design experiences that push data to
the edge of your organization.
CLICK HERE to find out more
and explore the platform
 LEARN MORE

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McKinsey, The Path to True Transformation

5 Data creativity