Analytics used to belong exclusively in the realm of the nerds. The tools and the time required to tease insights out of huge volumes of data were incompatible with the real-time needs of customer-facing business people.
But with analytical tools that are more user-friendly than ever and breakthroughs in in-memory computing, analytics is moving out of the back room and into the board room — as well as the sales representative’s iPads and the call center agent’s cross....