Business intelligence (BI) is back in the forefront for 2012, but a new Gartner report states, "By 2014, fewer than 30 percent of BI initiatives will align analytic metrics completely with enterprise business drivers," according to an article in 4-Traders. The disconnect may lie in part with the general lack of a written analytics strategy for business as well as the lack of IT professionals with the necessary analytical skill set.

The prediction by Gartner may hold truth, but it is the phenomenon of data pouring into the enterprise at an increasing speed and volume, from new sources such as mobile and social media, that contributes to the difficulty faced by small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in trying to stay on top of an analytics strategy. The voluminous data is also often time dependent in terms of its relevancy. This contributes to the need for more immediacy in attaining results and illuminates the challenge of formalizing and then implementing the right analytical processes to get the right data results to the right people at the right time.

For SMBs, where the data is stored may be another contributing factor in aligning metrics with business objectives. Data may be held both locally in the enterprise and in the cloud. The Gartner report notes that companies that have a cloud application are likely to simply use the BI functionality from that cloud provider. This could cause conflicts or challenges associated with data and BI functionality held within the enterprise. Further, data in the cloud is often sparse, due to the fact that it takes time to transition to the cloud space and because the data-transition plan may conflict or overlap with the analytics strategy. IT analysts at SMBs likely end up wearing multiple hats while trying to develop and keep up data infrastructure as well as trying to deliver analytics across the organization.

The Gartner report suggests that by 2013, the BI model will be a hybrid between centralized and decentralized delivery to ensure agility in dealing with the growing data problem. But as SMBs have already experienced, finding and retaining IT analysts that can carry out this model is a big challenge. A recent survey by EMC, detailed in Enterprise Apps Today, shows that there is a shortage of data scientists and that the problem will likely get worse over time. The Gartner report echoes this in suggesting that in 2012glad IT professionals should concentrate "not only on the technological aspects of BI, but also on the severe lack of analytical skills."

The challenge for IT in the coming year will be in identifying and then addressing any disconnects within their own enterprise in regards to a formal analytics strategy and the objectives of the business, and in growing the necessary analytics skill set to carry out the strategy. It is also important to recognize that the growing data problem need also be addressed, and that as data is transitioned to the cloud, the data transition plan must also align with the company's BI initiatives.