Gartner : Analytics and BI Bake-Off Rocks Data & Analytics Summit LIVE and IN PERSON, 2022!

We just completed our second of two live and in-person Analytics and BI Bake-Offs. The first one happened at our Data and Analytics Summit in London this past May. Last week, we ran the Analytics and BI Bake-off at the Data and Analytics Summit in Orlando with 5,500 of our closest D&A friends! These were our first in-person Data & Analytics Summits since 2019.

The Bake-Offs are fast-paced, informative sessions that let you see vendors side-by-side using scripted demos and a common data set in a controlled setting. We had been doing these BI Bake-off sessions in person at our D&A summits prior to the global pandemic. In fact, they have been some of our most popular sessions. Like all of you, the pandemic forced us to innovate and we did our very first virtual BI Bake off in October of 2020 and then again in May of 2021 - and they were awesome! But, like the smell of freshly baked bread or cookies - virtual is just not the same! There is NOTHING like the energy, vibe and fun of a live and in-person Bake-Off!! And these did not disappoint!

For the vendors that participate in the Bake-Off, it is in equal measure fun and extremely stressful. It's a high stakes session where they put everything on the line in from of their arch competitors, revealing what's coming and coveted sales tactics all while being judged by attendees. It takes a fair bit of preparation, extreme commitment, and an ability to shine under pressure.

As in 2019, to extend the Bake-Off experience to a broader range of vendors, including smaller innovators, this year in Orlando, we also did a series of Show Floor Showdowns. The Show Floor Showdowns are held on the Exhibit Hall show floor and are based on the same demo script and data set used in the ABI Bake-Off. Any vendor that Gartner has covered in any of its research and all vendors that had a booth in the Data and Analytics Summit, Orlando Exhibition Hall could apply to participate in Show Floor Showdowns. From there, six participants were randomly selected and invited to present live at the Show Floor Showdown sessions. The Analytics and BI Show Floor Showdown presenters in company alphabetical order were: Domo, EQ Technologic, iGenius, LTI Lumin by Fosfor, Tellius and ThoughtSpot. We also gave the demo script and data set to all vendors in the Exhibit Hall for inclusion in this post event blog. Oracle chose to do so this year. Their video is at the end of the blog.

This blog post highlights key findings and gives you access to participating vendor demos in both the BI-Bake-Off and the Show Floor Showdown sessions.

What Data Did We Use?

We use the Bake-Offs and the Show Floor Showdowns as a platform for data for good. This year's topic was the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Thanks to our friends at the UN, we used their extensive sustainability data set as the base for this year's demo. We have asked the vendors to answer some very important business questions related to sustainability, its impact on economic, environmental, and social outcomes.

Last year, we used global vaccine data, In 2020, we used population health data. In past Bake-Offs, we used loneliness and happiness data, opioid epidemic data, traffic fatalities, college costs, and homelessness.

The results were fascinating and in some cases counter intuitive regarding the economic, social and environmental impact of progress with sustainability. Here are some notable findings and videos from participating vendors.

BI Bake-Off Vendors' Key Findings and Videos

Microsoft, Qlik and Tableau were selected for this session because they are MQ leaders.

In company alphabetic order.

Microsoft

Microsoft chose to focus on access to electricity and CO₂ emissions. Some of the key insights they found:

• Access to electricity has improved around the world in the last 20 years. At a global level the number of people without reliable access to electricity spiked in 2011. That year over 112 million people in India alone suddenly found themselves without a reliable power source.
• Some countries have seen significant improvements - particularly in rural areas. Afghanistan has gone from 7% of the rural population having good access to electricity in 2005 to 97% in 2019.
• There's a high correlation between increasing access to electricity, GDP per capita, and CO₂ emissions.
• Developing nations see the highest correlation between decreasing CO₂ emissions and decreases in fertility rates and increases in literacy. More developed countries see decreases in poverty ratio having the highest link to decreasing emissions.

Here is the link to Microsoft's BI Bake-Off video.

Qlik

Qlik chose to focus on Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and Goal 13 (Climate Change).

• Access to affordable and clean energy links closely with health outcomes due to the use of dirty indoor cooking fuels, this disproportionally affects women
• Average global temperatures have increased by around 2 degrees Celsius for all months of the year and there is a clear correlation between Gross Domestic Product and the output of CO2. Whilst this link is weakening due to renewable energy production, is it falling fast enough?
• Solar power is being used successfully in many African nations, but data collection is poor and so hides the important social benefits of this energy source
• For most countries we see the use of renewable energy increasing, but nuclear power is likely to be an important part of the low carbon energy mix as shown by France, Sweden and Switzerland.

Here is the link to Qlik's BI Bake-Off video.

Salesforce (Tableau)

Tableau chose to focus the zero hunger goal. Key Findings include:

• Hunger is a global problem but concentrated in developing countries.
• Sao Tome and Principe stands out with the lowest value for Undernourished Persons (25,324), a relatively low value for Undernourishment Rate (12%) and a low value for Population (211,032). Mali stands out with the lowest value for Undernourishment Rate (5.1%). Nigeria stands out with the highest value for Population (195.9 million)
• Ethiopia was an exception with a high Population value. Ethiopia was an outlier with a high Undernourished Persons value. Madagascar was an exception with a high Undernourishment Rate value.
• A lot has changed in the world since the last data points collected by the UN, will be interesting to see how the past few years has affected the global goal to end hunger.

Here are the links to Tableau's BI Bake-Off videos.

Section 2 - Look and Feel For the Consumer
Section 3 - Dashboard Design, Analysis, and Storytelling
Section 4 - Data Preparation
Section 5 - Differentiator or Cool Innovation

Analytics and BI Show Floor Showdown Vendors' Key Findings and Videos

Vendors in these sessions were randomly selected after they applied to participate based on either being covered in Gartner research or having a booth on the Gartner D&A Summit Exhibition floor.

In company alphabetic order: Domo, EQ Technologic, iGenius, LTI Lumin by Fosfor, Tellius and ThoughtSpot.

Domo

Domo's key findings related to Affordable & Clean Energy include:

• Access to power is not enough for countries to advance - there is a minimum viable threshold of energy consumption that is needed: around 1000 kWh/capita.
• Compounding improvements to quality of life and life expectancy can be achieved by focusing on countries that are below this threshold.
• An energy production plan is built through what-if analysis to find the best power production mix that satisfies requirements across energy, cost/investment, quality of life, life expectancy, reliability, and GHG emissions targets.

Here is the link to Domo's Show Floor Showdown video.

EQ Technologic

EQ Technologic key findings are:

• Most of the countries in Europe (specially northern Europe) and the Americas (North and South America) have made significant progress on SDG7.
• The Renewable Energy Consumption as percentage of total Energy consumption is significantly lower on an average across the world.
• SDG7 progress is improving over the years across the world, countries are moving in the right direction from Major Challenges Remaining to SDG Achieved.
• The Access to Clean Cooking fuels and Technologies improves as the Income level of the country increases across the world. It is also observed that as Access to Clean Cooking fuels and Electricity increase, the Overall Wellbeing of the country also improves.
• Some countries with high income still have some challenges remaining in achieving SDG7, these countries have the means to switch to cleaner energy hence they should move away from fossil fuels and coal.

Here is the link to EQ Technologic's Show Floor Showdown video.

iGenius

• By analyzing the greenhouse gas emissions and relating it to the GDP of developed economies, we see that Bulgaria has the worst ratio, while among the top performers we see Sweden and Norway;
• Such positioning is very much demonstrated and aligned with the renewable energy share on overall consumption (where Sweden and Norway are well positioned) and the adult mortality rate for diseases, where Bulgaria has the overall worst percentage indeed;
• When it comes to CO2 emissions in absolute value, although the US produces the highest amount within developed economies (reasonably driven by the magnitude of its economy), it covers a virtuous 3rd position for percentage of fossil fuel subsidies per unit of GDP and it also has the lead in terms of foreign direct investments (FDI) for sustainable development, and the highest number of companies publishing sustainability reports - demonstrating to be strongly engaged in reducing the carbon footprint.

Here is the link to iGenius's Show Floor Showdown video.

LTI Lumin by Fosfor

Key insights from LTI Lumin by Fosfor include:

• Renewable energy generation is growing steadily each year, crossing the 7m giga watt hour (gwh) mark in 2019. the share of renewable energy in the total energy mix has also increased, with renewable energy now accounting for over a quarter of all energy generated globally.
• In the five-year period since the 2015 paris climate agreement , developing economies have led the way in renewable energy generation, contributing over 70% to the overall change. continuous investments into renewable capacity addition as well as international flows into clean energy research are the primary drivers behind this change
• Countries in the east asia and pacific region contributed the most to renewable energy generation, accounting for 54% of the overall change. a further drill down at the country level shows china as the leader with an increase of 44%
• Among renewable energy sources, wind grew the maximum, contributing 40% to the overall growth
• During the same time, population having access to electricity also saw a steady increase reaching 90% in 2019. moreover, the renewable energy generation is predicted to grow at around 8% year over year for the next few years.

Here is the link to LTI Lumin's Show Floor Showdown video.

Tellius

Tellius focused their analysis on UN Sustainable Development Goal 8, which promotes inclusive growth and productivity as well as decent work opportunities around the world. Key insights identified include:

• Over the past decade, global GDP growth was fairly stable, with a more extreme drop in growth towards the end of the 2010s. This drop in global GDP for the world was most heavily felt by the subregion of Latin American and the Caribbean.
• Several of the KPIs measured around promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth and employment for all are highly correlated. An interesting relationship to explore further is the inverse correlation between financial participation and employment rate. This may indicate that countries with a high employment rate may have less knowledge-based employment and rely on skills-based employment, leading to less modern infrastructure for high financial participation.
• Yemen, amongst other low-income countries, stands out as a key country to focus on for economic growth opportunities. It has the lowest GDP growth on average and one of the lowest financial participation rates. There appears to be a lack of gender parity in the workforce, as women above the age of 16 with primary education or less are 3.3x more likely to fall into the poorest income classification.

Here is the link to Tellius's Show Floor Showdown video.

ThoughtSpot

Key insights from ThoughtSpot include:

• Average life expectancy in Africa over the last 20 years was much lower than on other continents. As we drilled down into this more, we saw that life expectancy has generally trended up for African countries.
• By adding a conflict variable to our worksheet, we found that every single country we identified experienced a dip in life expectancy at birth, highlighting that even the best sustainability efforts in the world are no match for the destructive power of war.
• As we continued combining and analyzing different data sets, we did find a few things that seemed to be positively correlated with life expectancy: total energy consumption and average energy usage per capita actually declined during the Great Recession.

Here is the link to ThoughtSpot's Show Floor Showdown video.

Vendors in the Exhibit Hall That Submitted Their Video

Oracle

Key insights from Oracle include:

• It must be said that novel discoveries were hard to come by in the data - pretty much everybody already knows that humans are burning too much fossil fuel, and that at the planetary scale we need to do much better.
• There are bright spots though - the cluster of countries in the high-income group (based on Oracle's ML model built in OAC) managed to reduce co2 emissions while increasing GDP growth from 2005 to 2015 (sadly though this is not the case for most groupings and it was pre-COVID).
• Interestingly, the data also shows that countries with a higher proportion of women in government may tend to emit less co2 per capita, and that some African countries put the G20 countries in the shade with their energy mix and use of renewables.

Here is the link to Oracle's video based on the BI Bake-Off and Show Floor Showdown demo scripts and data.

Thank you to all our amazing BI Bake-Off and Show Floor Showdown panelists!!

Orlando

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London

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Happy Baking!

Regards,

Rita Sallam

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