Many industries and companies have recognised the transformative potential and chosen to be early adopters and integrate AI functions into their products, services and operations. When used correctly, AI has the potential to enhance efficiency, drive innovation and deliver more personalised experiences for customers. But what about in the world of business analytics? 

At its core, business analytics is about making sense of large datasets to try and decipher trends and predict future performance. The use of AI in this sector has the potential to help process large amounts of data faster and uncover insights and patterns that more traditional methods may miss. This could help us make more informed decisions faster, reduce risks and maximise opportunities. The keyword here though is “could”. During a recent Transformation Tuesday session, Associate Director of Talenza, Miles Austin-Raffan, caught up with Phuong Tran, Managing Director of Mantria Consulting, to chat about all things business analytics, the pros and cons of AI and whether it’s here to take over all business analyst jobs (spoiler alert; it’s not). 

Finding the balance 

Many AI tools out there (most of us have probably heard of ChatGPT) have helped to streamline and speed up some of our more mundane admin tasks. In the business analytics sector, this could translate to gathering all the necessary information and formatting and presenting it ready for business analysts to use. However, as Phuong pointed out during the session, there is a lack of user experience that currently comes with using AI for such processes. 

“Where I think it lacks is the overlay of user experience [or] user interaction, so that you can actually pivot the project plan as you go through. I think it lacks that little bit of wisdom.” 

While AI has the power to seriously improve our efficiency, it still lacks human elements. There are times when that human touch is critical and currently it’s important to find that balance between when AI is needed and when something should be left to the human experts. 

But how did we get here? 

While we love to see results, sometimes it’s just as important to know and understand how we got to those results. Often when AI gives us the answers, it won’t exactly tell us how it got there. For some stakeholders, having this level of understanding and transparency is important, if not crucial. Without it, we can’t know if any biases influenced the results or even if there might have been errors in the process. This can make accepting the outcomes delivered by AI challenging and unnerving for some. 

Bye bye boring 

As we mentioned above, one of the great benefits of AI is we no longer have to spend hours completing mundane and repetitive tasks. With AI automation, business analysts can ease their mental load and focus on other important processes that involve more creative thinking and strategic planning. Rather than using time to collate and sort data, analysts can get AI to complete these steps and focus more on interpreting the data and coming up with strategic plans, which can help boost productivity and innovation across an organisation. 

Creating connection 

We spoke about a “human touch” earlier and while AI may not be able to replace the connection you get by actually interacting with another human being, it can potentially help to make customer interactions with businesses a little better. AI-powered analysis tools can help companies get a deeper understanding of their customers’ preferences, needs, behaviours and engagement patterns. This enables the company to deliver more targeted and personalised suggestions, products or marketing initiatives. This can then result in stronger customer loyalty, better revenue and better brand advocacy. 

Seeing into the future 

While traditionally business analysts have used historical data, these days it’s more about being forward-thinking and trying to anticipate future trends and challenges. AI can actually complete all this analysis with advanced predictive modelling. Doesn’t this make a business analyst’s job obsolete, we hear you say? No! Instead, they can take this information and use more of their time to develop preemptive strategies, tackle challenges ahead of time, take advantage of emerging opportunities and give their organisation a more competitive edge. 

Friends, not foes 

As we said, while AI can do some of the tasks business analysts normally spend hours on, this doesn’t mean we no longer need people in these roles. There are plenty of other tasks that AI just isn’t capable of, including: 

• Working with stakeholders to understand priorities and requirements 
• Ensuring effective and flowing communication between teams and all stakeholders to ensure a project is on track and on target 
• Creating comprehensive business workflows, including any technical specifications 

While AI takes control of the bulk of the mundane work, business analysts can shift their focus and brain power to more innovative and productive tasks, especially where a human-centric focus is necessary. 

It’s not such a scary world after all 

While AI can seem a little daunting (we get it, we’ve seen all the movies too), the reality is these tools can have tremendous benefits for our working lives, especially in the world of business analytics. If you’ve been sitting there going back and forth on whether AI is something you should start incorporating into your work, a final few suggestions on some of the first steps you can take to start introducing the concept: 

• Understand and communicate the constraints. If you’re trying to pitch AI to your team, you not only need to deliver all the good things it can do but also what the constraints may be. Your team needs to know where they might need to fill the gaps, as well as how introducing this new technology may change people’s daily task list. 
• If you’ve got the green light to go ahead, consider looking at your company’s policies first. How can you rewrite them to incorporate AI? Can you make them more AI-friendly and encourage experimentation and innovation using these technologies? Are there any training team members should be undertaking not just on the use, but also the principles, of AI? 
• Consider appointing someone to oversee this new implementation and transition. While business analysts focus their brain power elsewhere, have someone who is focused on making sure all teams are across the changes and understand how these new tools will integrate at their level