More and more, business leaders are putting pressure on IT teams to get more out of data, and for good reasons. Studies show that companies that make data-driven decisions may outperform competitors by 85% in sales growth and 25% in gross margin.
But collecting actionable insights from massive volumes of business data is easier said than done. According to NewVantage Partners, 53% of business and tech executives at some of the world’s largest companies feel they aren’t treating data as a business asset. And 52% admit they aren’t gaining competitive advantages from data analytics.
Microsoft has quietly taken steps to help you solve this data analytics problem. A report from CNBC found that Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing division is growing twice as fast as Amazon’s—and much of that growth is driven by a deep commitment to both transparent analytics and big data services.
Data analytics should be your most powerful asset for business growth. And with the right investments in Microsoft Azure Analytics, you can meet that objective.
In recent years, Microsoft has continually added new features to Azure, including more robust analytics and data services for organizations of all sizes and industries.
Most importantly, Azure Analytics updates have focused on enabling you to stream multiple data channels simultaneously for faster, more efficient analysis. To get the most out of your business data, you can’t just analyze different channels and types of data in siloes.
Instead, you need access to tools that help you store critical data in the cloud and generate real-time insights that deliver cost savings across your entire organization. Microsoft Azure helps you unlock data-driven decision making and cost savings in three key ways.
Whether it’s from eCommerce websites, traditional point of sale devices, or IoT sensors, mid-size enterprises produce an astounding amount of data every day. The challenge has always been optimizing both structured and unstructured data in ways that don’t create silos across databases. If you’re searching multiple databases for information, you could miss out on valuable insights that you’d get from aggregating all of that data.
Azure helps you combine multiple data sources into a single, trusted model that streamlines data processing and analytics. This isn’t just a benefit from a technical perspective—it also enables new levels of self-service and data discovery for business users to take advantage.
One of the typical disadvantages of cloud-based analytics is that you continuously have to make decisions about what data you keep and what data you discard. However, long-term retention in Microsoft Azure acts as a tape replacement and lets you keep valuable data indefinitely. Microsoft goes as far as to say that customers can retain data in Azure for 99 years.
By taking advantage of Azure’s support for open-source frameworks like Hadoop and Spark, you can maintain all data necessary to meet your own analytics demands as well as any regulatory compliance needs—without having to worry about exponentially-increasing costs.
Companies like SentryOne are taking advantage of Microsoft’s growing set of Azure Analytics capabilities to take that step.
Migrating to cloud technology from legacy, on-premises IT that is siloed is one major step toward gaining a holistic view of your business. The next step is finding all of the radical insights buried deep in your company data.
Whether you’re uncovering human resources information, forecasting sales and staff need more effectively or monitoring supply chains at scale; Azure provides the computing power and flexibility to deliver efficiency gains that are impossible with legacy IT environments.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to data analytics. If you want to collect the most valuable insights possible, you need a platform with the flexibility and depth of capabilities to meet any possible analytics demand.
This is one of the most important advantages of Azure Analytics Services. The analytics engine spans across the following seven tools to cover just about any data analysis need.
With these seven unique tools and services, you can take advantage of the full power of Microsoft Azure Analytics to benefit your business as a whole.
Every time a user browses your website or purchases a product, you’re collecting valuable data that could be used to grow your business—and Azure Analytics gives you the foundation of tools and capabilities necessary to get the most out of that data.
One of the most important advantages of insights generated by Azure Analytics is the ability to personalize customer experiences. Real-time analytics helps you surprise customers with personal interactions that are completely catered to their unique behaviors and even recommend products based on their activity.
Azure Analytics is the ability to personalize customer experiences.
Just look at how Newell Brands is already taking advantage of Azure’s cloud-based analytics engine. With Azure Data Lake Storage and Data Lake Analytics, Newell can store more than 100 terabytes of data to execute data transformation programs. Azure SQL Data Warehouse then extracts key data from those solutions to create insightful reports for business users. In addition to these tools, Newell takes advantage of a host of other Azure Analytics tools to gather insights quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
“With Azure, we have visibility into millions of consumers interacting with multiple brands, which is critical for creating better marketing campaigns and ensuring the best possible in-store ad and product placement.”—Roberto Pasquier, Senior IT manager, Solution Delivery at Newell Brands
It’s not just about collecting data about customers. Once you’re able to store critical customer data effectively, you can make the most of that data. In many cases, that means personalizing customer experiences as Newell does. But it also lets you optimize backend processes like inventory management. With the right insights, you’ll be able to forecast inventory needs more accurately, cutting costs across your supply chain and avoiding disruptions in the customer experience.
No matter what your business goals are, the easiest path to success lies in data analytics. Combining the right data with the right analytics solutions will give you the insights necessary to pursue any goal across your organization.
If you want analytics to become your most powerful asset for business growth, you need to set yourself up for success. That means taking the right steps to design an IT environment that will support a more data-driven culture.
That’s where we can help at Tridius. Contact us and find out how we can help you take advantage of Azure Analytics to grow your business.
Tridius Technologies (a Terralogic Company) is an IT consulting firm that blends strategic planning with technology innovation, in areas like Cloud Infrastructure, Application Development,
Managed Services and Dynamics 365. Our mission is to inspire, innovate and improve.
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