It’s Like Your Data Saying, “Ask Me Anything”
Analytics only makes an impact when it’s put to work to do a job automatically, or more often, help people do their jobs. The more people who can use analytics, the more valuable it becomes. And nearly every role could benefit from answers their company’s data could provide. What stops analytics from becoming part of everyone’s daily routine? It isn’t a slacking data engineering team, or an imperfect data architecture, it’s the interface. If I need to know something for my job, instead of learning complex SQL queries, or interpreting a bunch of graphs, why can’t I just ask?
The need to learn to write SQL or some other language like Python just isn’t an option for your average farmer, your average truck driver, your average grocery store shelf stocker. But, the world needs food, the world needs those jobs to be done as efficiently as possible, just like every job.
BI visualization tools were invented to try to fill the gap between data experts and people who needed to use data, but weren’t experts in data analysis. But even a dashboard requires some esoteric knowledge to understand and to use, especially the complex ones. When you get down to it, people just want to get answers to their questions.
Why do they have to learn a new language, or operate a complex interface? Why can’t they just ask?
That is the essence of augmented analytics. Use natural language querying (NLQ) capabilities to enhance data analytics applications, so people can simply ask what they want to know. Or, they can get answers, not just in complex visualizations, but in plain language explanations of what those visualizations mean, using natural language generation (NLG).
By simplifying both the asking of questions and the plain understanding of the answers, NLP augmented analytics vastly broadens the number of people who can put analytic technology to work, exponentially increasing the value of analytics to a business.
Vertica has the advanced capabilities and performance to power this cutting-edge technology. And we’re not talking about a pie-in-the-sky possible future. Vertica partners and customers are putting NLP augmented analytics to work right now.
If you want to learn more, check out the Unify Data Analytics thought-leader webinar series recording with Neil Raden, Founder and Principal Analyst of Hired Brains, discussing how NLP augmented analytics works, and me discussing some examples. Also, check out the in-depth white paper Mr. Raden wrote.
If you want to see augmented analytics in action, watch the recordings of the Lumenore and TesiSquare Data Disruptors webinars. Both of these companies have NLP augmented analytics built in, each using this new capability for a different purpose. Both do a great job of, not just discussing, but demonstrating how their applications use the power of the question.
Related Links:
Learn more about NLP Augmented Analytics
TesiSquare case study
Lumenore case study
About the Author
Paige Roberts
Vertica Open Source Relations Manager
In over two decades in the data management industry, I have worked as an engineer, a trainer, a marketer, a product manager, and a consultant. Contributor to O'Reilly's 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know. Now, I promote understanding of Vertica, MPP data processing, open source, high scale data engineering, and how the analytics revolution is changing the world.
