Gartner® D&A: The Pyramid blue view from London

Key takeaways from the 2023 D&A Summit

I’m feeling blue. Nope—not sad. I’m feeling Pyramid blue!

The Gartner D&A Summit just wrapped, and what an exhilarating three days!

Although there were nearly 4,000 attendees at the ExCel London, it felt like Pyramid (nearly 20-strong) was everywhere: staffing the stand, presenting on stages, running demos, toasting customers aboard a yacht, roaming the exhibition floor, absorbing the dynamic presentations, and listening to people from all over the UK and Europe tell their data and analytics stories.

I couldn’t be prouder—and more excited—to be a part of it.

Hot topics: generative AI, decision intelligence, people

We’re collectively experiencing a monumental change in how we use technology to solve age-old business problems. The data and analytics market is shifting rapidly. It’s beginning to feel like technology can finally deliver value that matches our sky-high expectations.

This year, AI, and specifically generative AI, were predictably the hot topics at the event (a theme that carried over from the North America Gartner show in March). This time, there was a ton of buzz about ChatGPT, the Shiny New Thing (SNT). I lost count of all the exhibitors that mentioned ChatGPT in their signage or teased “future innovations.” (Note, our platform has led the industry in generative AI for several years and already integrates with OpenAI/ChatGPT.)

But that only hinted at a much larger theme: “decision intelligence” and its growing role in decision-making.

Decision intelligence, the “. . . practical discipline used to improve decision making by explicitly understanding and engineering how decisions are made and how outcomes are evaluated. . .” has exploded in the market. According to Frank Buytendijk, Distinguished VP and Gartner Fellow in Gartner’s Innovation and Disruption team, in his Gartner Futures Lab: Create Competitive Differentiation Through Better Decision Making presentation, “By 2026, 75% of Global 500 companies will apply decision intelligence . . . making decision-making the next competitive differentiator.”

Gareth Herschel, a VP Analyst at Gartner, led his keynote presentation, Decisions: Can Data and Analytics Make Them Any Better, with a simple question: should we judge a good decision by outcomes, or should we judge a good decision by the process behind it? Herschel noted a remarkable insight from his next slide: an even 50-50 split among respondents in a poll asking this very question. What does this mean? Both answers are correct, and technology should support results- and process-driven people.

His presentation, and at least five other keynote presentations that touched on decision intelligence, underscored the growing need for disciplined decision-making processes and the growing sophistication of decision-making capabilities. But it’s not just decision-making as a practical discipline that’s coming into focus. It’s the technologies that support them.

Simply put, decisions—and how we can use technology to make them—will be essential to the success of any modern organization.

And we’re leading the charge in the market. The Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform, which empowers people with augmented, automated, and collaborative insights that simplify and guide the use of data in decision-making, is already living up to the tantalizing promise of decision intelligence. Our platform features a rare combination of data prep, business analytics, and data science—powered by AI and augmented capabilities—in one frictionless platform.

According to Gartner, within the next three years, half of all organizations will evaluate analytics, business intelligence, and data science platforms as “all-in-one” platforms. We are positioned to help them drive more value in their data and analytics environments.

The other key takeaway was that all this is about people. Gartner analysts Pieter den Hamer and Georgia O’Callaghan, in their opening keynote (Lead for Purpose, Connect with Trust. Make an Impact), affirmed this belief, citing “skills and staff shortages (38%)” as the top roadblock to the success of D&A initiatives, per a Gartner Chief Data Officer Agenda Survey from 2023. Other Gartner experts made this point explicitly in numerous presentations.

Dynamic presentations

I had the honor of presenting with Daniel Flynn from Premier Foods, one of Pyramid’s—ahem—premier customers in the UK. Being on stage with Daniel reminded me that I’m better off stage than on it. Daniel was a natural, effortlessly weaving a story about how his company is navigating complexity using data and analytics and staying ahead in a competitive food industry. Thank you, Daniel, for letting me share the stage with you!

And speaking of naturals, our own Joe Beaubien once again stole the show with his presentation, Augmented Analytics: Evolve or Be Left Behind. Joe (affectionately known to us as JoeBeau) delivered his presentation with customary skill and enthusiasm, wowing the standing-room-only crowd with a discussion and demonstration about how augmented analytics can drive adoption and up-level decision-making across the enterprise.

Celebration on the Sunborn Yacht

Not only are these events about business, but they’re also celebrations. After a long day one, the team hopped aboard the Sunborn Yacht, just minutes from the bustling ExCel London Center, with 150-plus customers, partners, and prospects to connect and enjoy some time between all the conference events.

While the yacht was safely anchored, it felt like we were moving!

If it looks like we were celebrating, we were (and still are). What were we toasting this time? Our latest position in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2023* (Visionary) and our two #1 rankings in the Gartner Critical Capabilities for ABI Platforms^† (Augmented Consumer and Business Analyst Use Cases)! Check out those reports to see why we made waves this year.

That’s a wrap!

The Gartner D&A Summit in London was among the best shows I’ve ever attended—and that says a lot. It was a time for us to come together as an industry, find creative solutions to our most vexing problems, and become better data and analytics professionals.

And it was yet another confirmation that the Pyramid Analytics team—and the Pyramid Decision Intelligence Platform we’re all collectively building and telling the world about—can help people and their organizations prepare for what’s next. Let’s keep that momentum going. If you’re curious about all this buzz, we’d love to show you—request a demo here.

Notes and disclaimers

* Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms, Kurt Schlegel, Julian Sun, David Pidsley, Anirudh Ganeshan, Fay Fei, Aura Popa, Radu Miclaus, Edgar Macari, Kevin Quinn, Christopher Long, 5 April 2023

† Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms 2023, Julian Sun, Kevin Quinn, David Pidsley, Georgia O’Callaghan, Anirudh Ganeshan, Christopher Long, W. Roy Schulte, Aura Popa, Edgar Macari, Fay Fei, Kurt Schlegel, Radu Miclaus, Joe Antelmi, 17 April, 2023

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