A panel of experts agreed that using analytics to drive data-driven actions is paramount for success for Saudi Arabia companies

Dubai, UAE – December 07, 2022: Lumenore, which develops and markets advanced analytics and business intelligence solutions delivered through an intuitive, AI-powered platform, recently co-hosted a GCC virtual event, “Leveraging Data as the New Oil to Drive KSA Vision 2030”. The webinar, powered by Raqmiyat, was highlighted by a keynote address by Donald Farmer, an internationally recognized author and speaker and former Microsoft and Qlik executive, who also serves as a Lumenore strategic advisor. 

While the KSA is one of the world’s leading knowledge economies, it is suffering from a shortage of workers with a data analytics skill set. Additionally, only six per cent of businesses have been able to generate any significant economic value from an AI implementation, despite 75 per cent of organizations being AI-aware. 

In his address, “The Data Universe and Augmenting Insights” Farmer, who is the principal of TreeHive Strategy, spoke about the importance of data as a resource and the need for analytics in realizing its full potential. “The shift towards the Middle East becoming a digital economy has been remarkable,” Farmer said.  “Furthermore, the region has the infrastructure and technology to collect the data--data which is new, complex, and diverse, and is an invaluable asset for any business. However, data needs to be paired with analytics to be useful and analytics needs to translate to action to yield results.”
“Creating reports and data visualizations are standard now, so to get a real competitive edge, organizations must obtain new insights from using natural language, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and inculcate in the organization a culture of data-driven decision making,” Farmer said. “Data is not just the new oil, it is the new energy,” he added.

Joining Farmer on the webinar were Mahesh Vishwanath, Director at Digital Transformation – Raqmiyat LLC; Moaz Al -Sibbai, Chief Digital Officer – alfanar; Raymond Pereira, Senior ICT Specialist – Kuwait National Assembly; Amr Adly, Chief Architect – STC; Dr. Khaled Hafez Awedah, Executive Vice President for Strategic Development and Information Technology – Abdul Samad Al Qurashi Group; Bader Aljundi, Director, Business Intelligence & Data Management – IT & Smart City; and Kashish Keswani, Associate Director of Sales – Lumenore.

The panel agreed that the digital transformation across industries­not just in the Middle East but around the world­has significantly sped up due to the pandemic. The panel also agreed that new solutions to address the challenges in utilizing data to drive business decisions is the key to the digital transformation specifically in the Middle East and using analytics to drive data-driven actions in an organization is paramount for success.
Lumenore, a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) and advanced analytics solutions provider, empowers its users to use organizational intelligence and new forms of organizational decision-making. Its platform is a highly secure, self-service data infrastructure to deliver its users an enterprise-wide data universe that aims to democratize data and simplify decision-making in the business world. 

Lumenore announced earlier this year its plans to expand in the Middle East, with Dubai serving as its home ground. Further, Lumenore has also partnered with a UAE-based academy to utilize local talent and knowledge base. 

 “We are trying to bridge the gap between data and decisions, which is why we have built a platform that provides businesses with organizational intelligence capabilities on an enterprise level,” said Simon Karacinski, EMEA Sales Director at Lumenore. “The natural language capabilities of our ‘Ask Me’ feature enable widespread data literacy in an organization. Similarly, with our predictive analytics tool, like ‘Do You Know’ we enable businesses to build a robust and secure data universe.”