How AI and Business Analytics Drive Better Collaboration

AI applications have a very real impact on productivity and collaboration. According to MIT’s Sloan School, generative AI can improve the performance of a highly skilled worker 40% compared to their peers who do not use it. These improvements don’t just apply to individual work.

When generative AI and business analytics are combined effectively, it is often referred to as GenBI. As a non-techie, I find it fascinating how technologies like AI and GenBI are being used to make collaboration between people and technologies much more efficient than in the past. And what’s even more interesting is how it can also help foster better person-to-person collaboration.

What is GenBI?

Generative BI combines generative AI and business analytics tools to help make analytical data more useful and accessible to both business users and data teams. It works by connecting a generative AI solution to a company’s existing data sources and analytics tools.

Notably, GenBI systems generally do not rely on more public-facing generative AI solutions like ChatGPT, largely due to the challenges of uploading a large amount of data to an LLM, and the potential data security issues involved in sharing sensitive corporate data in this way. However, these systems still aim to provide a ChatGPT-like experience to create a simple and straightforward approach to business analysis.

Instead, like Avi Perez, CTO at Pyramid analysis explained in a recent interview with DATAcated, GenBI tools “allow users to submit their request. We give it to the LLM with a whole bunch of ingredient descriptions—what I call “ingredients”—to say, “Here’s what’s in the user’s database.” And the LLM basically comes back with the recipe and says, “This is how you should ask the question that the user is asking.” » The question is then run on the data itself.

Notably, as Perez explains, it’s GenBI tools that “speak to your data, not the LLM.” And that makes it scalable, functional, secure, and I actually think it’s the only way that we know of to make your enterprise data work with an LLM.

How GenBI is used today

Using the natural language processing With the models inherent in generative AI, people using these insights can benefit from greater ease of use when trying to derive relevant insights from their data.

This ensures that the GenBI tool actually provides answers and results that make sense for the question or request submitted by the user. With such a model, business users are often able to get answers to business analysis queries in less than 30 seconds, even when submitting a question in relatively vague or simple language.

With the help of GenBI, users can view information contained in data sources to quickly and efficiently perform relevant business analysis tasks, such as creating dashboards and reports, forecasting future results, investigation of business performance anomalies, etc.

By helping to deliver meaningful data points and reporting based on demand for information, users don’t have to spend countless hours digging through data, coding queries, or generating reports manually. Instead, they can focus on actually using this information for their own collaboration needs.

How GenBI can foster greater collaboration

As pointed out by recent report Through Zoom, AI can play a powerful role in improving collaboration efforts. According to the report, 75% of organizational leaders whose teams use AI say it has improved their collaboration capabilities.

Ultimately, the biggest benefit of using AI tools is saving time. Collaboration often requires a lot of time. Tasks such as sharing actions, obtaining and evaluating data, and sending communications are essential, but can become extremely time-consuming and distract from tasks that are bigger drivers of goals and activities partnership strategies.

By automating routine or mundane tasks, as well as tasks that may be difficult for individual workers, AI – and GenBI – allows people involved in collaborative efforts to save time and focus on things like sessions creative brainstorming or decision making.

As this example illustrates, GenBI can be a powerful resource for improving internal collaborations. GenBI can help individuals with data preparation and complex analyses, enabling them to work together to identify and communicate crucial information that can have a very real impact on overall performance, all in an extremely rapid manner.

Essentially, GenBI helps democratize a company’s available data so that organizations can optimize their marketing strategies, increase productivity, better understand the dynamics of their business and logistics processes and much more. With the ability to evaluate and use any data point in your organization, employees can benefit from greater transparency and communication as they find solutions to key problems.

Unlocking greater technological potential

With GenBI tools, businesses have another resource in their arsenal to improve the way they access and use data – and it can ultimately be a game-changer in how they collaborate internally and externally. By enabling all team members to better understand and use available data, organizations can operate more efficiently and with more reliable data-driven insights.

When this information is used to guide collaborative efforts, the potential outcomes at each stage of the partnership can be significantly improved and streamlined. Whether improving internal operations or ensuring clear and transparent communication with external partners, those who take full advantage of GenBI are poised to give themselves a distinct competitive advantage.