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Tag: Business Intelligence
Self-Serve BI Tools with Cross-Tab Reporting Improve Clarity and Results!
If you are considering a Business Intelligence solution or BI tool, or if you wish to upgrade your business intelligence and reporting tools, look for a solution that has self-serve cross tabulation, or cross-tab reporting. Cross-Tab reporting reveals the relationship between two factors or targets. This analytical tool can be used for side-by-side comparisons and to compare results for one or more data points, variables, or targets.
Did you know that, by some estimates, data-driven businesses are nearly 25% more likely to acquire customers? If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!
‘Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions.’
In this article, we discuss the value of self-serve BI tools with Cross-Tab capabilities and the benefits of this type of focus and insight.
Benefits of Self-Serve Cross Tabulation Reporting
Flexible for Business Use Cases
Cross-tab reporting allows for intuitive use by business users with average technical skills, and can be beneficial for all types of business functions and industries. In an educational setting, a university or school might use cross-tab reporting to analyze teacher or course evaluations, looking at the relationship between student satisfaction and the subject, the class time, class location and other factors. Businesses can analyze team and employee satisfaction and attrition by looking at job location, benefits, the results of exit interviews, available training, and support, etc. Cross-tab reporting is frequently used in market research to analyze the various factors that relate to product or service satisfaction, including product features and options, where and how the product is sold, the sales and marketing approach, etc. A retail store owner might use cross-tab data analysis to determine customer satisfaction by looking at demographics, the gender of the person buying the product, the price of the product in a particular region, etc.
Data Clarity
There are many ways to slice and dice data and many ways in which crucial information can hide inside that data. The self-serve cross-tab reporting approach allows business users to examine relationships among data points and factors, with more clarity and accuracy. This type of analysis provides more clarity and reveals results, interdependent relationships and factors that might otherwise be missed. Users can avoid confusion when working with data and analyze large datasets to reveal frequencies and percentages. With this information, the business can understand the ‘what if’ of the various factors and see how results would change if one factor or relationship is changed.
Fact-Based Decision-Making
Self-serve cross-tab reporting simplifies analytics and allows business users to spot trends and patterns and collaborate with other team members to adapt tasks and activities to resolve issues and/or capitalize on opportunities. Using cross tabulation reporting to understand the connection and relationship between two or more factors allows the business to make a decision, with confidence. Rather than guessing the reason for declining results, increased employee attrition or other problems, the enterprise can clearly see what factors (and the relationships among factors) are the cause of a problem and how to change those factors to get better results.
‘If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!’
Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions. By giving your team members these tools, you can leverage domain and industry knowledge and combine data analytics in a day-to-day environment without the need for assistance from data scientists or the IT staff. Self-Serve Cross-Tab reporting produces clear results that are easy to understand and can be used in staff meetings and presentations to support recommendations and help the business become more agile.
Look for seamless Business Intelligence Reporting And Flexible Tools that include self-serve Cross-Tab reporting. Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.
Original Post : Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data!
If You Want Business Users to Embrace BI Tools, You Need to Focus on Simplicity!
If your enterprise has not already adopted business intelligence tools, it is missing a crucial benefit in competitive positioning and accurate, dependable decision-making. If your organization has implemented BI tools, but you are falling short on user adoption success, return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO), it is probably because the business intelligence solution is not meant to support business users.
PC Magazine says that, as business users are asked to leverage BI tools, the enterprise must focus on simplicity to engender user adoption.
‘When your team can access BI tools that support the way they work and provide meaningful views and features to easily integrate with work and business processes, user adoption is easier and more immediate.’
To achieve your enterprise goals, ensure user adoption and get the most out of your investment, you must focus on two things: user-friendly features and function and sophisticated analytics.
In this article, we list some of the considerations for business intelligence solution selection or product upgrade. This list is meant to help you assess your current solution, and/or review the capabilities of any BI tool you are considering.
Simplicity in Technology:
- 100% browser-based solution
- Intuitive interface
- Mobile application that is suitable for iOS and Android
- Simple, affordable licensing
- Rapid implementation (roll out in minutes, not months)
- Simple, multi-layered access and user rights management
- Simple architecture
Simplicity of Use:
- Ability to personalize dashboards
- KPI Reporting
- Easy-to-use reporting tools
- Collaborative features
- Social BI for sharing, ranking and commenting
- Smart Data Visualization
- Assisted Predictive Modeling
- Self-Serve Data Preparation
- Clickless analytics for easy searching and results
The business intelligence tools you select can and should include out-of-the-box, ready-to-use features that are designed to support your applications, your industry, and/or your business function. When your team can access BI tools that support the way they work and provide meaningful views and features to easily integrate with work and business processes, user adoption is easier and more immediate.
‘To achieve your enterprise goals, ensure user adoption and get the most out of your investment, you must focus on two things: user-friendly features and function and sophisticated analytics.’
Look for Ready-To-Use Tools that users will want to adopt. Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, with features your users will readily leverage. Choose flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.
Original Post : BI Tool User Adoption Depends on Simplicity!
Smarten announces the launch of SnapShot Anomaly Monitoring Alerts for Smarten Augmented Analytics. SnapShot Monitoring provides powerful data analytical features that reveal trends and anomalies and allow the enterprise to map targets and adapt to changing markets with clear, prescribed actions for continuous improvement.
Smarten has announced the launch of Predictive Model Mark-Up Language (PMML) Integration capability for its Smarten Augmented Analytics suite of products. PMML Integration capability allows data scientists and business users to create PMML Models in other platforms and use those models within the Smarten suite of products without the need for coding.
Smarten CEO, Kartik Patel says, ‘The addition of PMML integration capability enables faster roll-out and allows users to leverage the Smarten workflow for PMML predictive models, adding more flexibility and power to the Smarten suite of augmented analytics tools.’
With Smarten PMML Integration organizations can simplify, streamline, and integrate the analytical process, for swift, clear predictive analytics in a user-friendly environment designed for every business user.
Smarten PMML Integration enables users to use models created in other familiar platforms like Python, R, Java, KNIME and other platforms, and integrate those models into the Smarten workflow within minutes, without complex coding, scripting, or programming.
‘Smarten PMML Integration enables a seamless process, designed for business users,’ says Patel. ‘Users can import PMML models and enjoy full integration and the full power of the Smarten feature set.’
The ready-to-use Smarten workflow guides the user from validation of the model to roll-out in the production environment. Smarten PMML integration provides simple language interpretation of models and enables predictions using single and multiple test records with user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) or Web services API.
Simply create the predictive model, using your favorite platform, export the model as a PMML file and import that model to Smarten. Models are interpreted in English and model details are logically organized. Enjoy the Smarten feature set and seamless workflow to perform predictive analytics with support of REST-API for third-party apps for prediction.
Contact the Smarten team to find out how Smarten PMML Integration can support your business needs and your business users with simple features and tools that are suitable for every team member.
About Smarten
The Smarten approach to business intelligence and business analytics focuses on the business user and provides Advanced Data Discovery so users can perform early prototyping and test hypotheses without the skills of a data scientist. Smarten Augmented Analytics tools include Assisted Predictive Modeling, Smart Data Visualization, Self-Serve Data Preparation, Sentiment Analysis, and Clickless Analytics with natural language processing (NLP) for search analytics. All of these tools are designed for business users with average skills and require no special skills or knowledge of statistical analysis or support from IT or data scientists. Smarten is listed in multiple Gartner Reports including Gartner Data Preparation Report, the Market Guide for Enterprise-Reporting-Based Platforms and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms Report for the ElegantJ BI Business Intelligence Suite.
Original Post : Smarten Augmented Analytics Launches PMML Integration Capability!
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The client is a leading publicly listed Pharmaceuticals Company with a large shareholder base. The company manufactures all major dosage forms such as Tablets, Capsules, Injectables, Syrups, Ointments, etc.
Founded in 1982 as a construction company, client has successfully positioned itself amongst the top 10 construction & infrastructure management companies in India. Client has to its credit many prestigious projects in the Industrial, Power, Institutional & Infrastructure sectors across India.
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Understand the Benefits and the Challenges of a Business Intelligence Strategy!
If you follow industry and business publications, you know that analytics are taking the lead in business strategy. Gartner states that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’ If your enterprise is implementing a business intelligence and analytics strategy, it is important to plan carefully and to understand the real benefits as well as the challenges of choosing the right BI tools and deploying these tools to users in a way that will ensure optimal user adoption and leverage of analytics to achieve the results you need.
‘Your business should carefully assess requirements and plan for expected user adoption by selecting a BI tool that will offer the features, ease-of-use and functionality your team members need.’
In this article, we provide examples of the various benefits of BI tools for specific business functions and some of the technology and user challenges you will face as you consider your options and plan for implementation.
No matter the business function, there are benefits to implementing a business intelligence strategy that will deploy these tools to your team members. Here are some examples:
Benefits
Finance – Your organization will be more efficient and profitable, with Ready-to-Use Dashboards, Analysis, and KPIs designed especially for the Finance domain. This business intelligence solution includes interactive Dashboards that allow users to perform intuitive, easy analysis of key metrics including Profitability, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payables, Cash Flow Analysis, Past Due Invoices, Balance Sheets, Income Statements and more!
Inventory – Inventory business function allows users to accurately plan and optimize inventory. Interactive Dashboards track item movement, compare sales to closing stock, and monitor warehouse stock and value, and answer critical questions regarding stock turnover ratio, seasonal buying, back-order assessment and safety stock to prevent lost sales. Users can analyze inventory levels to effectively manage stock based on the buying behavior of customers.
Purchasing and Procurement – Allows users to view and analyze spending details, analyze procurement data, drill through data to analyze issues, measure performance, identify savings opportunities, and track supplier performance. Identify reliable trading partners, analyze supplier cost, perform purchase rate comparisons, reveal trends, identify top/bottom vendors, and achieve timely insight into spending patterns and trends across all departments.
Production – Quantify and visualize data at the operational level to make fact-based decisions. Analyze Output, Reduce Labor Costs, Maintain Inventory Levels, Optimize Equipment Performance, Monitor Rejection Ratios and Downtime, and take action before problems arise to mitigate risk, and capitalize on opportunities. Publish automated reports to monitor and manage plant performance and provide management with quality metrics and relevant data.
These are just a few examples of how business intelligence can be used within a business function, department or business unit to benefit business users and to help the organization make fact-based decisions, spot trends and patterns and opportunities, and identify the root cause of problems.
If you want to take advantage of all of these benefits and ensure success of your business intelligence initiative, your business should carefully assess requirements and plan for expected user adoption by selecting a BI tool that will offer the features, ease-of-use and functionality your team members need.
Technology and User Challenges
Social BI
Your team members are also consumers and outside of the office they are used to a collaborate and social experience. By engaging in Social BI, your team can champion data sharing, collaborate on creative ways to analyze data and make quick work of data analytics, with tools that allow the user to ‘like’, ‘share’ and leverage other social tools and networking techniques.
Mobile BI
Not every BI tool provides real mobile business intelligence to accommodate every type of device, screen size and resolution. Choose a solution that has a Responsive and Adaptive UI engine, so you can roll out BI tools on any Desktop, Tablet or Smartphone without any device specific development. ‘Design once, Use anywhere’ concept in true sense.
Personalized Dashboards
Business users will not adopt a solution that limits them to predefined dashboards. Each user has a need to see and use data in a different way. Be sure to select a solution that allows your users to work in a way that is meaningful to them.
Interactive, NOT Restrictive
Choose a solution that will allow users to leverage deep dive analytics. There is no way an organization can anticipate every question or type of analytics a business user will need to incorporate into decision-making. Provide truly interactive tools that will assure user adoption and make your organization more agile.
Ease-of-Use
Advanced Data Discovery allows business users to perform early prototyping and to test hypothesis without the skills of a data scientist. Advanced Data Discovery ensures data democratization with Self-Serve Data Preparation, Smart Data Visualization and Plug n’ Play Predictive analysis that can drastically reduce the time and cost of analysis and experimentation.
‘No matter the business function, there are benefits to implementing a business intelligence strategy that will deploy these tools to your team members.’
Ready-To-Use Business Intelligence tools can support data democratization and improve your business results. If your business understands the challenges of implementing a business intelligence solution and adequately plans for implementation and user adoption, it can leverage the benefits of these tools and solutions and ensure success. Let us help you achieve your vision and improve productivity and insight across the organization.
Original Post : Address the Challenges and Achieve the Benefits of BI Tools!
