Ask HN: Why do companies struggle to find relevant insights in business data?

[cneumann81]

I'm currently investigating the data analytics market to see if it is a good spot to start a business and love to get your insights.

There are myriads of business intelligence, data analytics and management reporting tools on the market. However, it seems that businesses have a hard time to find relevant (business) insights in their data. Why do you think this is? What are these tools, and the business that use them, struggling with? Please don't think just about these tools and their features, but also about the people using the tools, the processes behind, etc.

Would be great if you could state your role or position, to help me understand what your background is.

Thanks!

[georg1224]

It's been puzzling to me for ages how some AI applications (e.g., natural language processing, image recognition, self-driving cars, ...) have progressed in strides over the past years, while MS Excel still asks me to specify the field delimiter when importing a CSV file. Seems a bit 80s. Only few BI applications seem to do better.

Agreed that consultancies have been the go-to insight providers for businesses over the past decade, but I see this changing as businesses get more data-savy and consultancies struggle to attract the tech skill needed to defend their top position (compared to skilled in-house teams).

Georg, ex-consultant

[guyparker]

I agree with dribel and Georg.

@Dribel - most times it took months not weeks! And by the time the insights had been found, the opportune moment for taking advantage of the insights had passed.

The organisations that are excelling are the ones that hire competent employees and invest heavily in setting up an agile analytics architecture which allows them to test hypotheses easily and quickly - these are the companies gaining a competitive advantage through analytics.

[dribel]

I think foremost consulting companies actually do the job you describe.

They basically try to find the right information in the data. It often takes them weeks to do so. I could imagine that especially those consulting firms as well as their clients have a strong interest in a solution like that