The data analytics pendulum has swung widely over the past 40 years. In the 1980s and ‘90s the software used to crunch data was under the strict, central control of corporate IT organizations. But over time that model morphed into a user-driven free-for-all that some liken to an analytics version of “Excel Hell.”

There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach. IT lockdown guarantees that everyone works from the same, ostensibly “good” data. The flip side is bureaucracy and slow-as-molasses response times. The free-wheeling analytics democracy, on the other hand, lets people generate data analytics reports fast, but it spawns multiple, conflicting “versions of the truth.”

Source: diginomica.com
Author: Barb Darrow