According to RIC Consulting, augmented analytics is designed to accelerate insights, ensuring actionable business intelligence. With the right technology behind it, augmented analytics can go even further, allowing humans and machines to enhance one another.

Essentially, true augmented analytics is achieved when the user is enhanced by the system. The result is that data is turned into business value, which offers measurable return on investment, says the team at RIC Consulting .

Yolanda Bennetts, general manager at RIC, says, "From first-generation centralised BI (which led to bottlenecks and more questions) and second-generation decentralised BI (where select users could discover and play with the data but needed more), came third-generation democratised analytics (where the entire workforce can interact with data in a meaningful way)." 

"What Qlik offers now is a unique associative engine, true augmented analytics and the power to embed analytics at the right time, anywhere," she says.

MCd by Mack Rapapali from Jacaranda 94.2, RIC’s first Qlik Analytics Tour and the networking event that followed were, by all accounts, a great success, reports the team.

The presentations were well-received, starting with a product demo by Woudre van Zyl, analytics strategy advisor at RIC. This was followed by a Zoom presentation from Qlik's global technology partner Inphinity.

Sean Price, vice president of industry solutions and Martin Kostic, CEO at Inphinity, shared how the business pushes the boundaries of business intelligence with products that add real value.

Attendees received first-hand accounts of how Qlik Analytics has transformed organisations. Fourth generation family farm owners Zander and Edrean Ernst from Allesbeste, for example, declared a 40 to 50%cost saving in its pruning operations.

Jacque Du Plessis from Advanced Data Science demonstrated the power of integrating Qlik with data science. Ian Dury, business process manager, KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa shared that the business recouped the entire cost of its Qlik Sense implementation in one month, due to efficiencies gained using effective BI.

According to Dawn De Raedt, owner and founder of RIC, Qlik is continuing to innovate, providing solutions that turn raw data into remarkable outcomes.

"From the modern, streamlined and versatile Qlik Sense architecture, to Qlik Alerting (which keeps users informed of any anomalies in real-time), the interactive Qlik Insight Bot and the robust Qlik (Attunity) Data Integration platform, businesses are empowered to bridge the gaps between data, insights and action," says De Raedt.

De Raedt says that Qlik Data Integration (QDI) is essential in a modern BI strategy. "Integration is what makes a simple database migration tool and turns it into a set of technologies that users can leverage to create reliable data pipelines," says De Raedt.

"This not only ensures data ingestion but also automation, managed data delivery and cataloguing, as well as high visibility," De Raedt concludes. "In a competitive environment, trusted, real time enterprise data is a prerequisite to success. With QDI, organisations enjoy a more holistic and agile approach to data integration and analytics."

For more information, visit www.ricconsulting.co.za. You can also follow RIC Consulting on Twitter.