From Dashboards to Decisions Through Natural, Context-Rich Conversations
Sean Li, Lead Solution Architect at Data &AI, designed and led the development of NTT DATA’s Cognitive BI ecosystem, built on Snowflake Intelligence, enabling business leaders to interact directly with structured and unstructured data through natural language and receive context-aware, decision-ready insights.
Laura Scavino, Director in the AI practice talks about our partner Snowflake, a provider of secure data environments and explains how the company’s Cognitive BI service is transforming business intelligence and how NTT DATA clients are leveraging AI.
For decades, dashboards have shaped how organisations understand their world, delivering clear KPIs and a trusted window into performance.
But the businesses we lead today operate in a very different reality: fluid markets, global supply chains, shifting customer expectations, and constant waves of new data. Leaders need more than a snapshot of the past. They need foresight. They need context. They need clarity in the moment the decision matters.
Dashboards weren’t built for that.
The future of Business Intelligence is not another report or another chart. It’s the ability to converse with your data, uncover the “why” behind every trend, and explore what’s possible next.
This is Cognitive BI, powered by Agentic Analytics, an entirely new way of thinking, where AI turns information into intelligence, and intelligence into action. It’s where every leader can ask any question, in plain language, and get answers that are immediate, contextual, and transformational.
This is the next era of decision-making.
Why Traditional Analytics Falls Short and Why Leaders Are Ready for What Comes Next
Organisations have invested heavily in modern data platforms, yet many leaders still feel they’re only scratching the surface of what their data could do for them. It’s not a failure; it’s a sign that the tools haven’t caught up with the ambition of today’s business.
From an executive perspective, the challenges are clear:
- Insights take too long – Even with advanced tools, leaders wait days or weeks for answers they need today.
- Data is scattered across systems – Preventing the seamless, end-to-end visibility leaders expect.
- Teams are stretched thin – Analysts spend their time responding to urgent requests instead of driving strategic value.
- Context is hard to access – Critical knowledge lives in emails, conversations, and documents that dashboards can’t interpret.
- Dashboards have become a barrier – They require technical fluency, making even simple questions difficult to answer quickly.
But these challenges don’t reflect a lack of capability—they reflect a new era of expectations. Leaders today want more than reports. They want clarity in the moment, the ability to ask any question in natural language, and insights that come with context, foresight, and recommended actions.
Executives are asking, “Why can’t I instantly see which regions underperformed and why?”
Data teams are thinking, “Imagine if we could shift from pulling reports to building real innovation.”
The gap between those two worlds is not a failure—it’s the opportunity to innovate.
The opportunity for analytics that is conversational, contextual, adaptive, and truly intelligent.
The opportunity for AI that works alongside every leader and every team. And the opportunity to finally unlock the ROI that traditional BI could never reach.
Most organisations today drown in dashboards but starve for answers. Cognitive BI changes the interaction model:
From charts to conversation
Ask any question to your data and get instant answers.
Ask more of your data “Why did sales drop?” and get a narrative answer, not just a bar chart.
Context as the new currency of insight
Gain full visibility into your data sources to strengthen transparency and build trust.
Unlock comprehensive context and clear explanations for every data point
Instead of stopping at structured KPIs, Cognitive BI blends:
- Transactional data from your warehouse
- Customer feedback and call notes
- Market signals and macroeconomic indicators
- Internal documents and change logs
NTT DATA has already helped clients unlock the power of Snowflake Intelligence
One client was struggling with a fragmented, ageing data landscape built on manual processes and legacy, unsupported technologies. These limitations were reducing efficiency, increasing operational risk, and constraining scalability. To move forward, the client needed expert guidance on how modern data and AI platforms could accelerate their objectives, along with a strategic vision for future architecture and a well-defined Proof of Value (PoV) to inform investment decisions.
NTT DATA delivered a comprehensive discovery engagement, assessing the client’s current data architecture, operating model, and business priorities. We evaluated the suitability of a Snowflake-native data and AI platform and identified how advanced capabilities, such as Cortex AI, Snowflake Horizon, and Agentic AI, could address critical use cases. Our team designed a target-state architecture, operating model considerations, and a metadata-driven approach to enable scalable, efficient workflows across structured and unstructured data sources.
A key outcome was a high-impact PoV demonstrating how AI could extract valuable insights from complex data inputs and automate processes previously handled manually. This PoV significantly reduced operational effort and introduced a robust, repeatable framework for leveraging non-deterministic AI tools, ensuring outputs were validated and integrated reliably into downstream processes. The result was a clear blueprint for future PoVs and a compelling business case for broader adoption of Snowflake Intelligence.
Throughout the engagement, NTT DATA delivered strategic value by aligning technology direction with business outcomes, simplifying complex architectural decisions, and equipping the client with the clarity and confidence needed to modernize their data landscape and scale AI capabilities responsibly.
From Insight to Action: The New Era of Enterprise Intelligence
With Snowflake Intelligence, users don’t just see that sales dipped, they understand why: incentives ended, and customer sentiment turned negative. This shift from raw data to contextual insight is what defines the next generation of enterprise intelligence.
Snowflake Intelligence: The Agent at the Centre
Snowflake Intelligence is a ready-to-use, enterprise intelligence agent designed for business users. Its intuitive conversational interface lets teams securely explore data in natural language, no SQL required.
Under the hood, it combines:
- Snowflake Cortex AISQL, Cortex Analyst, and Cortex Search to query structured and unstructured data at scale.
- Agentic workflows that connect to semantic views and models, ensuring answers align with governed metrics.
- Enterprise-grade governance with role-aware access, lineage, and audit trails built in.
For users, this translates into a simple, trusted experience:
- Ask questions in plain English.
- Get answers as tables, charts, or narratives.
- Drill into the evidence, queries, sources, and assumptions, to build confidence in every result.
In short, it’s how every team can talk to data, act on insights, and trust the answers.
Direct-to-Warehouse Interrogation
Modern platforms like Snowflake’s Cortex services allow AI agents to query data in place, directly in the warehouse. This approach reduces latency, eliminates duplication, and minimises governance risk, keeping data secure and decisions fast.
From Single Source of Truth to Single Semantic Truth
For years, organisations have chased the elusive Single Source of Truth, a unified data repository promising consistency. While centralising data matters, it’s no longer enough. The real breakthrough lies in shared meaning, not just shared storage.
Why Shared Meaning Matters
Executives make decisions based on metrics like revenue, active customers, or hazardous incidents. But what happens when these terms mean different things across departments?
- Finance defines “revenue” as recognised income.
- Sales counts pipeline deals
- Operations classify “hazardous incident” differently than Compliance
These inconsistencies create friction, slow decisions, and erode trust. A semantic layer solves this by standardising definitions across the enterprise. It ensures that when someone asks, “What’s our revenue?” the answer is consistent, regardless of who asks, which tool they use, or where the data resides.
The Role of AI in Semantic Alignment
Building and maintaining a semantic model used to be manual and resource heavy. Today, AI accelerates this transformation by:
- Drafting metrics and definitions from natural language queries.
- Leveraging existing metadata to propose standardised terms.
- Generating documentation automatically, reducing human error and time-to-value.
This means organisations can move from fragmented interpretations to a unified language of business, faster and at scale.
Key Innovations Driving Cognitive BI and Agentic Analytics
The way organisations consume insights is undergoing a profound transformation. By bringing together Snowflake Intelligence, NTT DATA’s KANO platform, and the principles of Cognitive BI, we’re moving beyond dashboards and static reports into a world of dynamic, contextual intelligence.
Here’s what makes this shift revolutionary:
- Interrogate data directly in Snowflake
Keep intelligence close to governed data. Questions are answered directly on the warehouse, eliminating fragile, duplicated reporting pipelines. - From metadata chaos to semantic truth
Using a knowledge-graph-driven agent on KANO, we ingest metadata from Snowflake, BI tools, and catalogs, then automatically propose a draft semantic model—ready for your team to validate and refine. - Multi-agent orchestration
We design agents that:
- Understand your business metrics
- Query the right semantic views
- Join structured KPIs with unstructured signals (documents, tickets, customer feedback)
- Return clear, role-sensitive narratives—with optional dashboards where needed - Full lineage and auditability
Every interaction is logged. Lineage, access controls, and query details are preserved so risk, compliance, and data leaders remain firmly in control.
The Bottom Line
Cognitive BI and Agentic Analytics aren’t just new tools; they represent a new way of thinking about data. A way where every question sparks an answer, every answer is explainable, and every decision is made with confidence.
Let’s talk about how this can transform the way your organisation makes decisions.