How Can I Ensure Data Quality and Gain Data Insight Using Augmented Analytics?
There are many business issues surrounding the use of data to make decisions. One such issue is the inability of an organization to gather and analyze data. These enterprises will typically focus on building a team of data scientists or business analysts to help with this task OR they might take on an augmented analytics initiative to provide access to data and analytics for their business users. This is where businesses will often face a second issue; namely that the analytics solution they choose is not designed to easily and quickly provide insight into data and to ensure data quality.
Don’t Be Daunted by the Challenges of BI Tools. Self-Serve BI is the Answer!
Gartner research reveals that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’ As business professionals, we all know that information is power and today, your business users are expected to know more and to keep pace with industry, market and customer changes that will negatively impact the business or have provide potential opportunities. But how do your team members achieve these goals when they are busier than ever, and the changes are coming more rapidly than ever!
‘Simple, self-serve BI tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your goals with features and tools like Social BI, Mobile BI, Embedded BI, etc.’
In this article, we will discuss the topic of modern business intelligence tools and solutions and the advantages of providing self-serve tools to your users for day-to-day analysis and intelligence gathering.
First, let’s look at some of the challenges you will need to consider when implementing self-serve BI tools:
Challenges of Self-Serve BI
Technology Access and Infrastructure Readiness – Your IT, finance and management teams will need a comprehensive understanding of your current technology and infrastructure, the data hubs, data warehouses and software solutions (legacy, best-of-breed, ERP, etc.) that will provide the foundational data for your users. You will need a plan and a roadmap to integrate these into your business intelligence strategy. A modern, seamless BI solution can provide a simple solution for what might otherwise be a challenging situation. If you can easily integrate your data sources and make them available for data gathering and analytics, your users can leverage the data to report, share and collaborate.
Team Member Adoption and Understanding – Your team will also need an understanding of the average technology skills of your business users and their willingness to adopt new tools and solutions. If your team members perceive that your BI tools are difficult to use, or if they are not educated on the need for and the benefits of self-serve business intelligence, they are unlikely to adopt the new tools. If, on the other hand, they see the value to their role and how it can make them more productive and streamline their work process; if they see that the solution is easy and intuitive to use, your business is less likely to face the challenges of team reluctance.
There are many other challenges and considerations that should inform your BI tools strategy, but these two are perhaps the most important.
Now, let’s consider some of the many benefits of self-serve business intelligence and how it can support your goals and simplify the lives of your business users:
Benefits of Self-Serve BI
Social BI – Social BI allows users to champion the use of business intelligence. Power users and those who are curious by nature will create reports, share and collaborate, using easy-to-use tools and thereby encourage others to use the tools and to repurpose report formats etc. to achieve their own goals. Social BI allows business users to share, ‘like’ and perform tasks in a way that is similar to social networking and is therefore popular among business users.
Mobile BI – Today’s team members often work remotely, or spend a lot of time on the road. By providing self-serve business intelligence that is intuitive to use and accessible on Android and iOS devices, the business can ensure that users will have seamless access and can accomplish tasks, search for information, share and collaborate, without missing a beat!
Data Democratization and Data Literacy – If you want your team members to grow and add more value, you want to encourage data literacy and ensure data democratization. Move away from restricted data access and sole ownership of analytics by data scientists, IT and business analysts. Provide easy-to-use tools that allow for simple search analytics in a Google-type environment and will make it easier for reluctant business users to embrace your new BI solution and develop new data analytics skills they can use for fact-based decisions.
User Adoption – There is nothing more frustrating than spending the time and money to implement a new solution, only to find that your users are resistant to using that solution. With true self-serve BI tools and intuitive data visualization, reporting, analytics and access, users will want to adopt the tools and share their discoveries with other team members.
Embedded BI – If you want to leverage existing technology, improve your Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for your current solutions and infrastructure, consider that self-serve BI tools can be embedded into existing solutions. With embedded BI with Integration APIs, users can leverage familiar, favorite software solutions in a single sign-on environment, and find information within those solutions without having to learn complicated new techniques or fighting with data silos and transferring data from one place to another.
There are many other advantages to Self-Serve Business Intelligence. This short list should give you some ideas of how you can leverage these tools in your own business landscape.
‘As business professionals, we all know that information is power and today, your business users are expected to know more and to keep pace with industry, market and customer changes that will negatively impact the business or have provide potential opportunities.’
Business Intelligence solutions should include tools and techniques that make it easier to achieve data literacy and provide data analytics access to all business users. Simple, self-serve BI tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your goals with features and tools like Social BI, Mobile BI, Embedded BI, etc. Let us help you achieve your vision and improve productivity and insight across the organization.
Key Influencer Analytics: What Is It and Why is It Important?
No matter the size of your business or in what industry your market is involved, the concept of analytics is more important today than ever before. Businesses competing locally or on a global scale are all engaged in market competition and, in order to grow and succeed, every business must understand its competitors, its own products and services, and most importantly, its customers and what products they are buying. Businesses must build and monitor and manage processes and activities, all with the goal of being the most productive and responsive in the market
Predictive Analytics That is Easy Enough for Any Business User!
Predictive analytics may seem too complex for business users but with advanced technology like machine learning and features like assisted predictive modeling users can dive into the process without the skills of an IT professional or a data scientist. Assisted predictive modeling frees the user by providing system recommendations that will suggest the right analytical technique and achieve the best fit for what the user wants to do, ensuring that they use the most appropriate algorithm for the data they wish to analyze.
What Does Becoming a Citizen Data Scientist Get Me?
When your enterprise turns to you to inhabit the Citizen Data Scientist role, it may (or may not) provide information on what that role is, why it is important for business users to transform into the role and exactly how the transformation will work. Online training programs, like the one mentioned in the closing lines of this article, provide information on the role, its purpose, how to collaborate with data scientists and IT, how augmented analytics solutions work and the types of analytical techniques you will be using.
Someone Said I’m Now a Citizen Data Scientist! Now What?
What do you have to know to be a Citizen Data Scientist? Who is the ideal candidate to be a Citizen Data Scientist? How does the whole Citizen Data Scientist thing work, anyway?
Do You Know What Key Influencer Analytics Can Do For Your Business?
What matters most in your business? Don’t say everything, because there is no way you can place strategic focus on every aspect of the business and, although all of your goals and objectives should be aligned, there are, in fact, a smaller number of things hidden within your business that will impact your success if they are not attended to and that will give you the most benefit if you spend a bit more time organizing and planning activities and business processes around these things.
Can I (or my team) Handle the Citizen Data Scientist Role?
If you are a business owner or a business team member who has been asked to consider the Citizen Data Scientist role, you may be wondering how it all works and whether you (or your team member) can handle the new role.
Answering Common Questions from Citizen Data Scientist Candidates!
When a business engages its team members and asks them to take on the role of Citizen Data Scientist, there can be many misunderstandings regarding the new role. One of the most common misunderstandings relates to who does what in the role of analytics. Some common questions include:
What Are Key Influencer Analytics and Why Should My Business Care?
Do you know what Key Influencer Analytics are? If not, you should! One of the most frustrating tasks a business user has in analytics is finding and gathering the right data for analysis and ensuring that all factors, variables and data that may affect the outcome of the analysis is included. That is why these activities are typically performed by Data Scientists, analysts or IT in many organizations. Without the ability to identify the right variables, and determine the relationships among these variables and business success, the business is likely to measure and attend to the wrong things.
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