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Author: Smarten
Choose a BI Reporting Tool that Tells You What You Need to Know!
The ideal business intelligence and analytics solution includes traditional BI features, modern BI and analytics components and a full suite of reporting capabilities that are easy for your team to use, and will produce clear, concise results for fact-based decision-making.
According to a recent TechJury survey:
- Data analytics makes decision-making 5x faster for businesses.
- The top three business intelligence trends are data visualization, data quality management, and self-service business intelligence (BI).
- 7 out of 10 business rate data discovery as very important.
‘A BI reporting tool that enables users to customize their view and approach and is easy to understand and use will make the user more productive and ensure Return on Investment (ROI).’
If you are considering a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, be sure to select a software suite that provides your business users with personalized dashboards, multidimensional key performance indicators, and KPI tools, report software, Crosstab and Tabular reports, GeoMaps and deep dive analytics with 100% browser based interface and self-serve features that encourage and support Social BI and collaboration.
By providing your team access to flexible, agile reporting tools, you increase the probability of user adoption, and improve the outcome, with reports and results that are meaningful to the user, and to the target audience of a presentation or distributed report.
Every business has unique reporting and documentation needs. Whether you are a business user or an analyst or IT professional, you use augmented analytics and BI tools in a way that is meaningful to your role. Gathering, preparing and analyzing is important but the final step in this process is equally important and that task often frustrates the user more than anything. Excel, cross-tab and tabular reporting are helpful, but those report and documentation options typically present data in columns and rows. A BI reporting tool that enables users to customize their view and approach and is easy to understand and use will make the user more productive and ensure Return on Investment (ROI).
Consider a Business Intelligence reporting tool that enables report, template and document design and configuration and supports preprinted fixed formats too. IT team members or consultants can leverage a simple, basic programming or scripting environment to define format templates and use data from Datasets and objects to produce stunning pixel perfect reports. Users can preview reports, export data to PDF files and share documents and reports via email at predefined frequency using delivery and publishing agents.
Benefits of Agile, Flexible Business Intelligence Reporting
- Customize and Format Reports, Documents, Forms and Templates Using Basic Scripting Skills
- Generate Reports from BI Datasets in Predefined Formats
- Satisfy Unique Business, Departmental, Functional and Statutory Requirements
- Present Information in a Clean, Attractive Format for Customers, Partners, Suppliers, Team Members
- Allows Business Users to Gather, Present and Share Information via Email and Publishing Agent
‘If you are considering a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, be sure to select a software suite that provides your business users with personalized dashboards, multidimensional key performance indicators, and KPI tools, report software, Crosstab and Tabular reports, GeoMaps and deep dive analytics.’
For out-of-the-box reporting and flexible, interactive formats, explore our full suite of reporting tools: Pixel Perfect Print Reports, Business Intelligence Reporting. If your organization is looking for BI Tools and Augmented Analytics that leverage advanced techniques to keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility, let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.
Original Post : BI Reporting Tools Can Make or Break Decision-Making!
Look for Analytics with Low-Code/No-Code Technology!
The advent of low-code, no-code app and software development has enabled rapid, innovative changes to all types of development projects and that new environment is evident in Modern Business Intelligence (BI) and Augmented Analytics products and solutions.
The Client is a prominent Indian construction and infrastructure company providing services in numerous sectors, including highway, rail, mining, energy, irrigation, and water supply. Known for their expertise in managing large-scale and complex projects, the Client has played a significant role in enhancing the India infrastructure and has achieved robust growth and financial stability. The Client is currently managing sixty two (62) projects and employs more than 5000 employees in numerous market sectors across India.
Making the Case for Citizen Data Scientists!
When a business decides to undertake a data democratization initiative, improve data literacy and create a role for Citizen Data Scientists, the management team often assumes that business users will be eager to participate, and that assumption can cause these initiatives to fail.
Auto Insights: Clear and Concise Analytics
Gartner predicts that ‘organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and external data will derive twice as much business value from analytics investments as those that do not.’ In order to make the most of the data that resides in all the corners of your enterprise, you must make sense of that data, and leverage it to create products and services, to compete in your market of choice and refine your workflow and tasks to improve productivity and agility.
The key to making the most of your data is analytics, and the ability to gather and analyze data and produce results that are intuitive and clear. Machine learning has evolved to support the average business user with tools and techniques that make it easier to gather and analyze data using simple techniques that are supported by analytical techniques, without requiring business users to have data science skills.
‘Auto Insights analytics allows business users to select the dataset to be analyzed, and let the system do the rest.’
Today’s business users expect to have access to software solutions and techniques that are easy to understand and navigate. As consumers, they have the world at their fingertips, with simple techniques that require little to no technical knowledge. If your enterprise plans to adopt augmented analytics tools and business intelligence techniques, it must provide simple tools that are easy enough for the average business users to incorporate into workflow and tasks. This approach will help the organization achieve its analytical goals while ensuring an appropriate return on investment (ROI) and decreasing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). It can also encourage and enable Citizen Data Scientist initiatives and improve data literacy.
The Auto Insights approach to analytics provides a foundation of Assisted Predictive Modeling and easy-to-use tools, making it simple enough for every business user to adopt as an important tool in the team toolkit, and supporting the path from business user to Citizen Data Scientist, with tools that encourage data literacy.
Auto Insights frees business users and reduces the time and skills required to produce accurate, clear results, quickly and dependably, using machine learning that frees the business user to collect and analyze data with the guided assistance of a ‘smart’ solution.
Auto Insights allows business users to select the dataset to be analyzed, and let the system do the rest. The tool will interpret the dataset, select important columns of data, analyze its type and variety and other parameters and then use intelligent machine learning to automatically apply the best algorithm and analytical technique and provide data insight so the user can easily see and understand the results.
The Auto Insights concept is applied to data repositories to enable the enterprise and its business users to perform complex data analytics and share analysis across the organization in a self-serve, mobile environment, bringing the power of sophisticated, advanced analytics and smart data visualization to the members to automate and analyze, so enterprise users can quickly get the answers they need and move on to make confident decisions.
‘The key to making the most of your data is analytics, and the ability to gather, analyze and view data easily, and produce results that are intuitive and clear.’
If you are interested in finding out more about the advantages of the Smarten Auto Insights approach to Augmented Analytics and self-serve search analytics, Contact Us to explore how these techniques can help your enterprise apply analytics to achieve results. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information.
Original Post : Auto Insights: The Secret Weapon for Analytical Results
Mobile BI Business Use Illustrates Real Advantages!
Mobile Business Intelligence (or Mobile BI) is defined as ‘a system comprising both technical and organizational elements that present historical and/or real-time information to its users for analysis on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets (not laptops), to enable effective decision-making and management support, for the overall purpose of increasing firm performance.’
Aberdeen Group reports that businesses adopt Mobile BI to:
- Improve business process efficiency
- Improve employee productivity
- Make better decisions, more quickly
- Provide better customer service
- Deliver real-time bi-directional data access to make decisions anytime and anywhere.
‘Mobile BI benefits go well beyond simple reporting and the sharing of data across user groups, to address real business issues and to keep users up to date and allow them to respond to real world, real-time issues.’
As local and global competition increases, most businesses are looking for ways to improve their competitive advantage, and to quickly adapt to the changing market, to employee needs and to customer buying behavior.
It can be helpful to consider some real-world business use cases, in order to understand the value and benefit of incorporating a Mobile BI solution within your technology landscape and your analytics approach.
The advantages of Mobile BI go beyond team collaboration and individual reporting needs, to provide the background and foundational information needed to make decisions on business strategy and to understand customer preferences.
The following list of companies represents a small sampling of businesses currently using Mobile BI to improve business results and efficiency:
Amazon – Amazon analyzes purchasing behavior and browsing history to predict what products a customer might want to see, and what they are likely to buy, personalizing the customer experience and making it easier for customers to complete a transaction. BI tools help the business to forecast demand and ensure that stock is available.
Starbucks – The business has implemented a loyalty program to help with customer engagement and sales, personalizing marketing strategies and allowing customers to order, pay and receive rewards. It gathers data using its digital channels and uses that data to create targeted offers and to improve customer retention, as well as increasing the amount customers spend during a visit.
Netflix – The company uses BI tools to personalize the viewing experience and to analyze customer viewing preferences and push specific options to the customer based on viewing history. Mobile BI tools allow teams to analyze and share information regarding regional viewing and to make decisions on the fly.
Uber – The company business model is dependent on the rapid changes and shifting behavior of customers from one local and regional area to the next. Real-time pricing and operational decisions are made to support surge pricing and driver deployment for high demand areas. The back-end systems and BI tools allow drivers to access information using the Uber app so that they can quickly respond to the changing environment.
Tesla – Mobile BI and wireless car data analytics allow Tesla to connect remotely to corporate offices and collect and analyze vehicle data to address issues and update customers on maintenance etc.
X/Twitter – Mobile BI provides support or moderators to identify and quickly address platform safety issues, violations, etc. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with BI tools allows the business to quickly respond and ensure a safe user experience.
Mobile BI provides the background and foundational information needed to make decisions on business strategy and to understand customer preferences.
These examples illustrate the many ways in which Mobile BI can be used to address business issues, providing user access and analytics for team members no matter where they are and how they need to use the data. Mobile BI benefits go well beyond simple reporting and the sharing of data across user groups, to address real business issues and to keep users up to date and allow them to respond to real world, real-time issues.
If you want to support your business user team and provide a foundation for BI tools that will better serve your team and your customers, explore Smarten Mobile BI benefits and features, with powerful functionality and access for your business users including out-of-the-box Mobile BI and advanced analytics for every team member. For more information on Mobile BI and Augmented Analytics, read our article, ‘Understanding The Truth About Mobile BI.’
Original Post : Understanding How Businesses Use Mobile BI to Achieve Results!
We invite you to explore our latest knowledgebase articles and to join the Smarten user community on Smarten Support Portal.
Analytics Solutions Should Include Key Influencer Analytics!
What is Key Influencer Analytics ? Simply put, Key Influencer Analytics is an analytical technique that helps the user analyze and understand the various factors affecting an outcome, what variables impact the metric, and the ranking of those factors. Key Influencer Analytics takes the guesswork out of decisions by clearly illustrating what factors influence success of a pricing strategy, a business location choice, a marketing campaign, a research project, etc.
‘With the right analytics solution, your users can simply point to the dataset they want to analyze and Key Influencer Analytics will identify the target and the influencers or predictors that will affect the target, along with its impact.’
Grand View Research estimates the analytics software market at nearly 142B USD, with an expected growth of nearly 14% over the next five to six years. The reason for this growth is simple. In order to succeed in their market of choice, businesses must understand the competition, the customer and how their products and services are perceived and embraced in the market, so they can plan for the future and adapt to changes.
There are a few factors that will impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the analytics solution you choose.
- First, the data volume you want to analyze can be very large, and the data can come from disparate systems, so the ability to integrate and gather all data in one place is important. Depending on the size of the dataset a user selects, there may be hundreds or thousands of variables, and business users often find it difficult to identify the rights ones. Yet without the ability to identify the right variables, the business is likely to measure and attend to the wrong things.
- Secondly, you must provide easy-to-use tools that your team can leverage to find what they need. Users should have interactive features that allow them to see and explore other combinations and impacts and can select target and predictors, and use them for models, reports or KPIs. Influencer Analytics empowers every business user and allows them quickly select and target data to achieve results without the assistance of a data scientist, IT professional or analyst.
- Third, your team needs key influencer analytics to understand the interrelationships of data points and how they affect outcomes so they can adapt and adjust. With the right analytics solution, your users can simply point to the dataset they want to analyze and Key Influencer Analytics will identify the target and the influencers or predictors that will affect the target, along with its impact and it provides crucial metrics such as mean, outliers, and others and identifies relationship and distribution among variables. The system will auto-suggest relationships and present distribution and impact using the most appropriate visualization.
Here are just a few of the benefits of Key Influencer Analytics:
- Identify what matters most in your data!
- Understand the impact and interdependence of variables
- Leverage auto-suggestions and machine learning to get data insights
- Identify influencers affecting the target variable with auto-suggestions and quick maneuvers using different combinations
‘Key Influencer Analytics takes the guesswork out of decisions by clearly illustrating what factors influence success of a pricing strategy, a business location choice, a marketing campaign, a research project, etc.’
With Key Influencer Analytics your team can address the right issues and capitalize on opportunities to optimize results. Explore Smarten Augmented Analytics modules and components and the benefits of Key Influencer Analytics for your team and your enterprise.
Original Post : Use Key Influencer Analytics to Understand Data Relationships!
Use Embedded BI to Encourage Business User Analytics Adoption!
Today, even the smallest business depends on technology and software to manage the business process, capture data and move the enterprise forward. No matter the size of a business, executives and managers now realize the value of providing analytics to make decisions. In the past, the analytics process was the sole domain of IT, business analysts and data scientists but today, organizations know that data democratization and data literacy are key to business performance and to keeping pace with the market and with changing customer buying behavior.
In order to accommodate this need, the business must provide easy-to-use analytics solutions that offer sophisticated functionality and features in an intuitive environment so team members can embrace analytics and willingly adopt these solutions.
‘Embedded BI brings the power of analytics closer to the user and allows them to use popular software and apps to achieve analytical goals with a single sign-on approach.’
If you want to take advantage of this approach, there is a consideration you should include in your strategy – and that consideration might surprise you. Consider the number of applications and software products your team uses to complete tasks and to find information. Did you know that, by some estimates, team members lose up to ten (10) percent of their time switching tasks and applications. One of the most frustrating realities an employee can face is trying to gather and analyze data. Suppose you want to analyze sales for a particular location, or a particular sales team for a certain period of time. In the old technology world, you would have to export the data, or you might use an integrated analytics solution and gather the data there by choosing the fields you want to analyze.
Today, you can use Embedded Business Intelligence (BI) to find and analyze data without ever leaving the confines of your sales software. Embedded BI is designed to embed within a popular, familiar software platform. By placing this capability within a familiar application or software solution, the organization gives its team members access to data, pulling information from the system of origin, integrating and streamlining data processing and reporting time.
Embedded BI brings the power of analytics closer to the user and allows them to use popular software and apps to achieve analytical goals with a single sign-on approach, so they don’t lose time switching between software solutions or exporting and importing data. Users have access to dashboards, charts, graphs and analytical tools, all within the ERP, HRM, CRM, SCM or other enterprise solution. Embedded BI allows users to integrate analytics within workflow and collect and analyze data easily.
When considering an Embedded BI solution, be sure you choose one that accommodates access both in the office and on the road, with mobile access that enables business users to take analytics on the road.
‘In order to accommodate this need, the business must provide easy-to-use analytics solutions that offer sophisticated functionality and features in an intuitive environment so team members can embrace analytics and willingly adopt these solutions.’
You can find out more about the Smarten Embedded BI And Integration APIs solution and add powerful functionality and access to existing ERP, SCM, HRMS, CRM or any other products. Provide analytics capabilities within existing products without major Investment. Your business users and your customers will appreciate the ease-of-use and access and you will gain a competitive advantage. Read our White Paper: ‘Making The Case For Embedded BI And Analytics.’
Original Post : Embedded BI Simplifies Business User Analytics!
