Advanced BI Tools Aim to Democratize Data Science in Brazil

Self-service capabilities such as natural language queries and narrative-based data models are increasingly becoming the norm for business intelligence (BI) tools, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

The latest ISG Provider Lens Analytics Platforms report for Brazil finds “citizen data scientists” are the principal target audience for BI and data governance platforms. The term refers to engineers, business administrators and economists who have good analytical skills, a basic understanding of statistics and knowledge of the businesses in which they operate but little or no programming skills or formal training in data science, the ISG report says.

“Platforms are key to democratizing the entire data journey,” said Loren Absher, ISG director, Enterprise AI Advisory. “Providers in the Brazilian market are offering functionalities such as integration, data catalogs, data quality, data anonymization, and masking and access control.”

Data governance platforms are gaining traction in Brazil as companies go beyond data integration and engineering fundamentals to ensure data reliability and availability, the ISG report says. Without sufficient data governance, data model building will be unproductive, the report says. In fact, many projects aimed at democratizing access to data in the past have failed due to difficulties encountered during governance, such as duplicate data, lack of data lineage and difficulty in visualizing the entire data landscape, the ISG report says. Poor-quality data generates poor-quality models, ISG says.

To be effective, data governance must be carried out continuously and internally. That requires empowering non-technical users, such as citizen data scientists, the ISG report says. To that end, the application of graphical interfaces, based on the drag-and-drop mechanism, can play an important role in the adoption of data platform tools, ISG says.

Some providers have already incorporated GenAI into their platforms, especially when it comes to allowing users to interact with it in natural language, the ISG report says. According to the report, another role for GenAI involves using meta data to identify the category of data based on its format and value.

“Most Brazilian enterprises recognize the need become more data oriented, but not all of them have access to qualified data scientists,” said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “Low-code platforms and automated ML can offer important shortcuts on their data-driven journey.”