20 Analytics Predictions from the “Experts” for 2020 Part I

Guess how many will be 100% accurate?

(We’ll give you a hint. You only need one hand. You won’t need your thumb. And you’ll probably have fingers to spare.)

the doctor has been scouring the internet for the usual prediction articles to see what 2020 won’t have in store. Because if there is just one thing overly optimistic futurist authors are good at, it’s at pointing out what won’t be happening anytime soon, even though it should be.

This is not to say they’re all bust — some will materialize eventually and others indicate where a turning point may be needed — but they’re definitely not this year’s reality (and maybe not even this decade’s).

So, to pump some reality into the picture, the doctor is going to discuss the 19 anti-predictions that are taking over mainstream Net media … and then discuss the 1 prediction he found that is entirely 100% accurate.

In no particular order, we’ll take the predictions one by one.

Performance benchmarks will be replaced by efficiency benchmarks

This absolutely needs to happen. Performance benchmarks only tell you how good you’ve done, not how good you are going to do in the future. The only indication of that is how good you are doing now, and this is best measured by efficiency. But since pretty much all analytics vendors are just getting good at performance benchmarks and dashboards, you can bet efficiency is still a long way coming.

IoT becomes queryable and analyzable

… but not in real-time. Right now, the best that will happen is that the signals will get pushed into a database on a near-real time schedule (which will be at least daily), indexed on a near-real time basis (at least daily), and support meaningful queries that can provide real, usable, actionable information that will help users make decisions faster than ever before (but not yet real-time).

Rise of data micro-services

Data micro-services will continue to proliferate, but does this mean that they will truly rise, especially in a business — or Procurement — context. The best that will happen is that more analytics vendors will integrate more useful data streams for their clients to make use of — market data, risk data, supplier data, product data, etc. — but real-time micro-service subscriptions are likely still a few years off.

More in-memory processing

In-memory processing will continue to increase at the same rate its been increasing at for the last decade. No more, no less. We’re not at the point where more vendors will spend big on memory and move to all in-memory processing or abandon it.

More natural-language processing

Natural language processing will continue to increase at the same rate its been increasing for the last decade. No more, no less. We’re not at the point where more vendors will dive in any faster or abandon it. It’s the same-old, same-old.

Graph analytics

Graph analytics will continue to worm its way into analytics platforms, but this won’t be the year it breaks out and takes over. Most vendors are still using traditional relational databases … object databases are still a stretch.

Augmented analytics

The definition of augmented is a system that can learn from human feedback and provide better insights and/or recommendations over time. While we do have good machine learning technology that can learn from human interaction and optimize (work)flows, when it comes to analytics, good insights comes from identifying the right data to present to the user and, in particular, data that extends beyond organizational data such as current market rates, supplier risk data, product performance data, etc.

Until we have analytics platforms that are tightly integrated with the right market and external data, and machine learning that learns not just from user workflows on internal data, but external data and human decisions based on that external data, we’re not going to have much in the way of useful augmented analytics in spend analysis platforms. The few exceptions in the next few years will be those analytics vendors that live inside consultancies that do category management, GPO sourcing, and similar services that collect meaningful market data on categories and savings percentages to help customers do relevant opportunity analysis.

Predictive analytics

As with natural language processing, predictive analytics will continue to be the same-old same-old predictions based on traditional trend analysis. There won’t be much ground-breaking here as only the vendors that are working on neural networks, deep learning, and other AI technologies will make any advancements — but the majority of these vendors are not (spend) analytics vendors

Data automation

RPA is picking up, but like in-memory processing and semantic technology, it’s not going to all-of-a-sudden become mainstream, especially in analytics. Especially since it’s not just automating input and out-of-the-box reports that is useful, but automating processes that provide insight. And, as per our discussion of augmented analytics, insight requires external data integrated with internal data in meaningful trends.

No-code analytics

Cue the woody woodpecker laugh track please! Because true analytics is anything but low-code. It’s lots and lots and lots of code. Hundreds and Thousands and Hundreds of Thousands of lines of codes. Maybe the UI makes it easy to build reports and extract insights with point-and-click and drag-and-drop and allows an average user to do it without scripting, but the analytics provider will be writing even more code than you know to make that happen.

Come back tomorrow as we tackle the next ten.