The future of AI: Is ‘infusion’ the key to data democratisation? Posted on : Sep 12 - 2022

Sisense defines infusion as the practice of incorporating data and insights into end-user business applications. “Infusion is all about putting decision-supporting insights into a product in a way that feels native. It’s accessible. And it’s far more interesting,”  Scott Castle SVP of Product at Sisense says.

Typically, a BI tool works by pulling data together to help end users draw their own conclusions. They aggregate data, slice and dice, figure it out, come to the insight and then, take action.

Whereas, infusion speaks towards broadening perspective on what embedded analytics means to include more than just a chart to figure out. An example is the Apple Health Rings on Apple watches, Scott says.

“One of the cool things about this application is that when you’re walking, and it’s counting your steps; it won’t show you a chart. It bypasses that to provide an insight like, ‘Wow, you’re taking twice as many steps as usual; keep it up,’” he says.

That’s infusion. It allows a user to internalise that as opposed to a chart where the user would have to figure out what the information provided meant.

“Infusion is a bigger, broader, more inclusive term. And fundamentally, it’s vital to reaching the billions of underserved knowledge workers — all 90% of them for whom ‘drag and drop BI’ is not really self-service at all,” Scott says.

Three real-world examples of infusion:

1. Decision support: Applications like Outreach use embedded analytics to help users determine the best time to send an email for it to get read. It works by taking the insight, putting it in the UI, and guiding users to the best answer.

2. Connecting users to data: Building a plug that goes from your BI system into Excel, PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc allows users to access the data they need in a tool they already know how to use.

3. Data literacy: Teaching people to use data in their every day, minute-to-minute decision-making is data literacy. One of the things you can do with BI systems is to take a presence app like Slack or MS Teams and attach an NLQ on top of it. That allows you to write a query and the system comes back with a quick cut of data to see if it’s what you’re looking for. Basically, it allows people to start toying with data literacy.

Getting infusion right

Gerimedica, a multi-disciplinary Electronic Treatment Record SaaS platform company that serves the aged-care market, is getting it right. With around 60% of the market share as well as strong relationships with universities and the government, Gerimedica recently decided it was time to evolve and level up its offerings. Its customers were ready for something more.  View more