This is a condensed interpretation of the article written by John Jordan and posted to forbes.com.  For the full article, go here.

Is making decisions based on what the numbers say the only way we can do business?  Of course not, however we are a generation of workers, managers, directors and executives who have been trained and molded to rely on reports and spread sheets to make ‘educated’ decisions.  For better or worse that’s just part of today’s reality.  We are inundated with vast quantities of data each day to ‘assist’ our decision making process.  More complicated data and processes have required the development and implementation of data analytics solutions.  Here are nine possible reasons for the increasing use and popularity of these analytical technologies.

1.  Total quality management and six sigma require the strict application of data

2.  Data intensive methodologies, originally intended for longer term decision making/planning) are now being used for daily decision activities.

3.  New tools are making it easier to create and distribute very large amounts of data. 

4.  It’s now easier, faster and more economical to store and process higher amounts of data

5.  Vendors are pushing and evolving analytics solutions to help customers deal with issues shared among many segments.

6.  There is still a factor of data not being transparent.  Vast sums of money have been spent on data warehousing, management and dashboards but some managers still cannot trust the accuracy of that data due to system short comings, data quality, interpretation lenses and timeliness.

7.  Two words: Risk Awareness

8.  How do you correlate the data from very diverse sources (GPS location, credit report, the ‘like’ button)  to make a statistically meaningful judgment and correlate that to consumer behavior.

9.  Improved visualization reinforces the trend of more sophisticated quantitative analysis.