Metaverse

Picture this. The year is 2030. You’ve finally embarked on your life-long dream of starting your own business, and you’ve decided to hire a business analyst to mitigate the risks and provide you with a roadmap for success. Or at least, if not a roadmap, some descriptions, prescriptions, and predictions concerning all of the data out there that could potentially be of some relation to your business. Now, instead of that analyst utilizing that data and sharing their insights in the form of a mildly life-sucking, overwhelming powerpoint, they whip out their device and virtually display a metaverse depicting the projected future of your business given historical data, data forecasts, trends, competitor performance, consumer behavior, the variables working for your business, the variables working against your business, the economy, demand, and supply. They then give this metaverse to you, to be automatically updated as their data sources update and your own resources update. You’re left feeling like Superman, as one of the few small business owners starting your ventures based on data, not trial-and-error. Why? Because you can actually understand the insights and why your analyst is prescribing the course of action that they are. You’ve got the “whole world” in your hands, and an ever-changing one at that.

With the implementation of metaverses, the entire industry of business analytics will be revitalized. Nowadays, too many small business owners enter their ventures blindly under the premise that a business analyst should be hired only after their business has some transactional data of their own (which isn’t true!). And even when said business owners hire these analysts, they often struggle to understand newfound insights, how to implement them, and how their analyst reached certain conclusions. They waste a lot of time simply trying to grasp the applications of their current data just to almost immediately be met with new variables and external changes. As a business analyst and small business owner myself, I’ve found myself on both ends of the equation and somehow still left feeling lost at times. As a business analyst, it
can be a real challenge to “crunch the numbers” and share the findings in an easily understandable, visually appealing manner that a non-technical person would experience relief in looking at. As a small business owner, it can be a real challenge to understand how to go forward with the data available, whether taken from internal or external sources, at literally any point in the business’s life span. Metaverses will alleviate those issues on both sides. They’re interactive, visual, and ever-changing means of displaying data. They’ll allow business owners to view the performance of their data in a virtual world nearly identical to their business’ scope in the real world. Outside of individual metaverses crafted from code and data that a hired business analyst found to be relevant to a company, businesses, most notably small businesses, will also be able to position themselves in the massive metaverse known as Meta (formerly known as Facebook). With these implementations, business analysts will be able to analyze actual consumer reactions/behavior with the business– not just predictions and current behavior with competing businesses.

According to a report in March 2020, “67% of small businesses are spending more than $10K a year on analytics. 75% also say they are spending at least 132 hours every year on maintenance and systems.” And yet, with all that being said, “86.2% of the respondents say managers/execs can make better use of the solution.” Companies are spending excessively on data analytics tools, but it seems to be the general consensus that they are not getting the full bang for their buck. The prevailing issue? The complexity of the solutions they have in place. Brian Kirsch, Senior Vice President of Sales at Onepath, explained the problem: “The issue is that the tools can be hard to set up, overly complicated, and a pain to maintain.” Enter the metaverse. The metaverse is a hybrid of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality that blurs the barriers between online and offline relationships. In the near future, it will become a place where people can work, shop, play, and engage. A number of brands, including big names like Adidas, have already entered the metaverse. Innovation is the name of the game here.
However, according to an article published by Analytics Insight in March 2022, various organizations currently lack methods to optimize their big data analytics capabilities, restricting their ability to really comprehend the data they have about their company or their clientele. The metaverse will undoubtedly continue to expand and innovate at a breakneck pace, making it borderline unattainable for ill-prepared businesses to keep up. In big data analytics, Metaverse will provide teams with a cloud data platform that can collect and analyze internal and third-party data with a single point of access. Naturally, consolidating the access point will drastically down on the time it takes to find insights. Ideally, this model will be able to handle all kinds of data, whether structured, unstructured, or semi-structured, as well as separate information stores, gather new insights from the metaverse, and aid in forecasting future outcomes.

With the rapid rate that data is being produced—projected to reach 160 zettabytes by 2025— businesses have their work cut out for them. The metaverse paves the way for these companies to work smarter, not harder. As bits of data continue to power and generate this new hybrid physical and virtual reality, a "dataverse," as Harnham puts it, will grow alongside the metaverse. This dataverse will consist of each person's individual universe of unique data that will allow their virtual reality to work. It’ll be like the website cookies of today on steroids. As companies are given access to this data, business analysts will be able to identify target audiences and predict consumer behavior with a level of accuracy currently unheard of.

Metaverses truly have massive potential to take the guesswork out of business operations for both business analysts and business owners. The Internet Age is evolving into the Metaverse Age, and it’s imperative that businesses and analysts are up-to-date so as to not get left behind. Data continues to be the most sure-fire means of creating plans, predictions, and prescriptions, but it is currently too often mishandled, misinterpreted, and ultimately limited by outside parties regarding its full potential.

With data being as powerful as it is, there are still too many businesses relying on trial-and-error even after hiring a business analyst. It’s time for analysts to adopt the metaverse as a medium for "data-splaining." In the years to come, given the metaverse continues to evolve as projected, then a source more data-driven, all-consuming, and insightful than the metaverse will simply not exist. Tapping into the power of the metaverse will be what it takes for organizations to comprehend the data they have on their company and clients. It’ll be what it takes for teams to fully utilize cloud-based data platforms with a single point of access. It’ll allow analysts to more accurately predict, visualize, and prescribe a business's journey. No longer will “experience be the best teacher”. The metaverse will serve as a source for confident decision making. Between assuring and immersing, everyone should want to tap into metaversing.