Alteryx Study: Improving Analytics Maturity Key for Bridging Gaps Between Hong Kong Enterprises’ Business Priorities and Performance

Organizations demonstrate analytics maturity in strategy and data dimensions, but they lack workforce- and process-related analytics capabilities

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 7 September 2021 – Delivering
fresh insights into Hong Kong enterprises’ ability to create business value
from data analytics, Alteryx,
Inc. (NYSE: AYX), the
Analytics Automation company, today released
findings from its research report titled, “Toward Analytics Automation in Asia Pacific“. The research, conducted by International
Data Corporation (IDC) and commissioned by Alteryx, reveals a significant gap
between enterprises’ business priorities and performance, one that can be
bridged by overcoming the lack of workforce- and process-related analytics capabilities.
The study surveyed 100 organizations in Hong Kong across a range
of industries.

 

According to the research, Hong
Kong enterprises’ top business priorities include productivity enhancement, new
product development, cost reduction and customer experience. However, major
gaps exist between business priorities and business performance in cost
reduction and new product development. Currently, while more than 90 percent of
business executives believe that data analytics are
important for their organizations to remain performant, 26 percent enterprises have
achieved high
analytics maturity. APAC enterprises that are ‘Analytics
Experts’ tend to outperform their peers across all major business priorities,
especially in areas like cost reduction (56 percent), business model innovation
(28 percent), new product development (17 percent) and market expansion (12
percent). Hong Kong has the highest number of organizations who are ‘Analytics
Experts’ among the countries surveyed.

 

To help
enterprises to determine their analytics maturity level, IDC designed a
framework that assesses their standing across four key dimensions – strategy^[1],
data^[2],
workforce^[3]
and process^[4],
before providing an aggregated score that identifies Beginners, Practitioners,
or Experts. In addition, the framework describes the journey to becoming an
Analytics Expert by achieving maturity in strategy, data, workforce, and
process.

 

The
research found that enterprises are more mature in strategy and data
dimensions, with 53 percent having achieved buy-in and alignment amongst key
stakeholders regarding analytics initiatives, but only 41 percent having established
policies and practices to ensure data integrity. A large majority, however,
lack the necessary workforce (80 percent) and process capabilities (88 percent),
which are the most crucial for driving data-driven transformation at scale
and deriving long-term business value.

 

It also
suggests that enterprises need to build workforce or process-related
capabilities to derive business value from data analytics. In their daily
roles, executives across the region currently struggle with hard to use tools
(55 percent), scattered and unmanaged tools (49 percent), lack of timely access
to data (44 percent), data lineage and integrity (44 percent) and lack of data
literacy (43 percent). These challenges are exacerbated by increased complexity
and organizational demands for data analytics to be delivered at greater speed
and scale, with the average enterprise currently facing internal requests to
include 26 new data sources and 30 new data types per month.

 

“In today’s volatile, uncertain and challenging
business environment, enterprises in Hong Kong have expressed the need to
invest in mission-critical business areas. In addition, with the evolving needs
of customers, enterprises must innovate their business models to meet new needs,”
said Julian
Quinn, Senior Vice President, APJ, Alteryx. “The findings show a consensus towards the critical role that analytics
plays in driving business performance. Yet, organizations are grappling with multiple
challenges in using data analytics, uncovering the need to improve workforce
and process analytics capabilities. To deliver breakthrough outcomes, organizations
need to automate processes and democratize data analytics, elevating
workforce’s ability to gain on-demand insights for thriving in their roles.”

 

“Despite the rapid rate of digital transformation and
data generation, many organizations in Hong Kong are not yet experts in data
analytics. They are at the Beginners stage in their workforce and process
dimensions which are critical for empowering employees to do their jobs better,
faster and with greater impact,” said Dr. Chris Marshall, Associate Vice President,
APAC, IDC. “In the face of workforce and process challenges, organizations
today can close the gaps with advanced analytics tools. Analytic process
automation, in particular, is a low-code solution that has emerged as a way
forward to remove friction, enabling analytics capabilities to scale quickly across
the entire organization.”

 

The research findings also highlight the potential of a
self-service, human-centric analytics automation platform to bridge existing
workforce and process capability gaps, address analytics challenges faced by executives,
and put organizations on a path to become Analytics Experts.

 

The Alteryx Analytic Process Automation (APA)
Platform™ delivers end-to-end automation of analytics, machine learning and
data science processes. As a result, organizations can automate analytics and
data science, embed intelligent decisioning, empower its employees to deliver
faster, better business outcomes and ultimately, enable the agility needed to
accelerate digital transformation.

 

“Data should no longer sit idly in an organization. With
the help of analytics automation, an organization can leverage its best assets
– people, processes and data – to empower their workforce to increase overall
organizational performance and efficiency so that decision-making is faster and
more reliable,” said Quinn.

 

To access the full IDC Infobrief: Toward Analytics
Automation in Asia Pacific Report, please click here. 

To assess your organization’s analytics maturity with
IDC’s APA Assessment Tool, please click here.