Today’s business managers and owners are savvy enough to know that self-serve business intelligence is the way to go. Business users need data visualization, monitoring and analysis if they are going to help the organization to achieve the best results and compete in the market. You want to provide true data democracy in your organization and since most BI tools vendors are pitching the benefits of self-serve BI, one might assume that real self-serve BI tools are available from every vendor, but nothing could be further from the truth (so, buyer beware!)
Business intelligence products like Qlikview and Tableau provide desktop-based tools that are designed to be used by developers, programmers and trained business analysts. These tools allow designers to build views for publication to browser-based environs, thereby making limited business intelligence and reporting available to business users across the enterprise. These tools provide excellent data discovery and visualization, but they fall short of providing benefits to your business users – the people who drive your business!
Without the ability to perform ad-hoc queries and perform true drill down, drill through or to personalize views and reports by adding columns and data, your business users cannot enjoy real data democratization and self-serve tools. Without cross-tab features, business users cannot dive into data to analyze the root cause of a problem, capitalize on an opportunity or share data among team members.
Desktop-based BI visual monitoring and discovery tools provide limited benefits
- Flexibility for developers and analysts with powerful desktop BI tools
- Limited data views and filtering for business users using published, packaged, static dashboards
- Visual monitoring, including charts, tables and dashboards
In contrast to this, with powerful ad hoc reporting, 360¡ cross-tab and self-serve BI dashboards, users can add columns, new data, design dashboards, and data layouts, perform complex data operations, complex summary operations, add custom columns, and perform other sophisticated functions, all in a mobile, easy-to-use environment that will ensure user adoption, rapid ROI and low TCO.
If a business wants to empower and hold accountable its business users, it must give them real self-serve tools. ElegantJ BI provides business users with ad hoc query and reporting capability and cross tab analysis so they have real power!
If you really want your business users to absorb and use business intelligence, you can’t tie their hands with packaged tools. Not every user will want to dig into the data but many will and, by giving them self-serve BI tools, the business will get better results, and developers and analysts will be free to focus on core activities. Remember that data visualization alone does not provide results. The power of deep dive analytics is where innovation, problem-solving and true data discovery reside.
Self-Serve BI Offers Real Benefits
- 360 view of data
- Slice and dice
- Drill down, drill through
- Unique perspectives and data combinations
- Swift user adoption
- Deep dive analysis
- Personalized views and reporting
- Collaboration and sharing
- Mobility and integration
- Rapid ROI, Low TCO
- Minimal training requirements
- Data democracy
So, here’s the bottom line: With packaged BI tools and dashboards, business users cannot achieve real results. They can see questions but can’t answer these questions, and that is very frustrating. To ensure the health of your organization, your users need true self-serve BI tools. These tools will allow them to see and analyze data in a way that is meaningful to their function and role, and that will allow them transparent access at the summary and detail level, with fresh views and analysis that support confident decision-making and alignment with corporate goals and objectives.
Your business users deserve more than static visual monitoring and dashboards. They deserve self-serve BI tools – in the truest sense of the term – and solid data democratization!
Original Source – Don’t Rob Your Users: Give Them Good Old-Fashioned Ad-Hoc Analytics
