How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

Reporting and Data Visualization Improves Team Understanding!

Statistics reveal that many people learn best when they see a story or information depicted in an image. Graphs, charts with colors, lines and shapes can often tell a story and communicate issues, challenges and opportunities in a business environment.

According to Forbes, ‘Almost eighty-thousand scientific studies attest that visual images promote retention.’

‘Visualization and presentation formats can include personalized dashboards and visualization techniques, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards.’

Let’s consider a few examples of data presentation to illustrate how images, graphs, charts and visualization techniques can improve data understanding and retention.

How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

Cross Tabulation – Data presentation consists of categorization of data into groups, such as products, geographies, demographics, etc. It can be very useful in understanding sales results, product pricing response, target audience assessment, etc. Cross tab analytics can help your team understand market research, survey responses, seasonality and other factors.

KPI Reports – Key Performance Indicators (AKA KPI) can provide metrics in a dashboard environment that is easy to understand, so users can monitor and manage success factors, and quickly see where there are problems. KPI reporting can be used to identify and capitalize on opportunities and to adjust to challenges in the market and within the walls of the organization.

Custom Print Presentations and Reports – Every organization has a need for custom reports. Needs vary from division to department to user, and these needs can be expensive to accommodate. Custom reports to present data for decision-making, or to monitor results on an ongoing basis are crucial to the organization. But if the enterprise has to ask IT or business analysts or data scientists to satisfy the need, they are losing productivity, time and efficiency. By giving users the ability to design, format and product reports for a particular staff meeting or project, the enterprise can keep the process moving and ensure that the team has what they need to gather, analyze and understand results in a meaningful way. Custom formats might include customer statements, management reports, compliance reports, project templates, etc. Users can present data in a clean, colorful, attractive way to satisfy customers, partners, suppliers, executives and team members.

‘According to Forbes, ‘Almost eighty-thousand scientific studies attest that visual images promote retention.’

These are just a few examples of reporting formats and types, and how they might help your enterprise. Other types of visualization and presentation formats can include personalized dashboards and visualization techniques, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards.

Team members, managers and executives typically think of reporting and presentation as boring, detailed and unintelligible. They rarely see the value in using data to make decisions when, in fact, this approach is the wisest and produces the best results. But it is understandable that the staff, customers, partners and suppliers would cringe when a report is placed in front of them, emailed to them or presented on a screen.

What if you could create, format, present and share data in a way that quickly communicated results, delivered a message, identified an issue or illustrate dan opportunity? Change the way your enterprise uses and interacts with data, with clean, clear, concise, elegant and colorful presentation.

Explore the benefits of Smarten Reports, and Pixel Perfect Print Reports and the use of this this seamless PDF Pixel Perfect Reports Solution, and the Smarten suite of Augmented Analytics can support your business users with self-serve tools that are intuitive and will encourage user adoption and fact-based decision-making.

Original Post : How Can Data Visualization Help Me Achieve Business Results?

Case Study : Augmented Analytics for India Construction and Infrastructure Development Company!

Augmented Analytics for India Construction and Infrastructure Development Company

The Client is an India-based construction and infrastructure development company, committed to delivering quality infrastructure for private, public, and government projects. With over fifty (50) years of accumulated knowledge and experience, the organization applies its extensive resources to ensure superior infrastructure solutions.

Case Study : Augmented Analytics Solution for India State Government Citizen Centric Schemes

Augmented Analytics Solution for India State Government Citizen Centric Schemes

The Client is a state government with a population of approximately 30 million citizens, and an annual budget of $5 billion USD. This government agency focuses on implementing IT and e-governance initiatives to enhance citizen services and governance efficiency. By leveraging advanced technology, the agency aims to improve the quality of life for citizens and to streamline administrative processes across and throughout departments.

Understanding BI Tools in Today’s Market

How Do We Define Business Intelligence Today?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the lifeblood of an organization. Without business intelligence, the enterprise does not have an objective understanding of what works, what does not work, and how, when and where to make changes to adapt to the market, its customers and its competition.

You may be interested to know that TechJury reports seven out of ten businesses rate data discovery as very important, and that the top three business intelligence trends are data visualization, data quality management and self-service business intelligence.

As the Business Intelligence solution market evolves, it may be difficult for an organization to know when to invest in these tools, and which tools are best for enterprise and user needs.

Self-Serve KPIs Allow Teams to Manage and Adapt!

BI Tools with Self-Serve Multidimensional KPIs Enable Agility and Accuracy!

Gartner research reveals that, ‘data literacy will become an explicit and necessary driver of business value, demonstrated by its formal inclusion in over 80% of data and analytics strategies and change management programs.’ When  businesses adopt and embrace business intelligence and augmented analytics, the expectation is that the enterprise will benefit by improving data literacy as well as productivity.

But if your business wants to make the most out of BI tools and augmented analytics, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately. To understand the results and whether policies, processes and tasks are effective, your organization must establish metrics, and those metrics must also be clear.

‘Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.’

A solution that provides easy-to-use, multidimensional key performance indicators (KPIs) will allow your team to establish metrics that are unique to your needs and to your industry and market and help the enterprise understand how the business measures up in the competitive market, how well the products and services are faring with customers and whether workflow and business processes are having the desired effect.

Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics

Benefits of Self-Serve, Multidimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • When the organization gives business users the tools to establish and manage KPIs, it can become more productive. There is no waiting for the IT team or a data scientist to produce important reports, so the team can be agile and flexible.
  • Interactive KPIs provide tools to gather, analyze and measure with breakdown and dynamic frequency and slice and dice so users can focus on critical metrics and gain true insight into results. Users can leverage a powerful expression engine to set polarity, frequency and threshold levels in a browser-based interface and go beyond static monitoring to change frequencies, and dimension breakdowns and gain an understanding of performance and issues.
  • Users can establish and monitor KPIs at the individual, team, department, division, and company level and KPIs are integrated with other features to further analyze trends. Multidimensional KPIs gives business users the opportunity to monitor and manage results against goals and objectives and change processes, tasks, and activities as and when change is required.

‘When your business chooses a BI tool, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately.’

If your business wishes to improve data literacy and productivity by implementing or upgrading a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, it is imperative that you review the available modules, tools and features to ensure that the solution provides easy-to-use, sophisticated functionality that is suitable for your business users. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.

Choose a  Business Intelligence Reporting Solution that include Multi-Dimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). 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 : Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics!

Self-Serve Cross-Tab BI Tools Reveal Issues and Possibilities!

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.

Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data

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!

Business Users Love Simple (Yet Sophisticated) BI Tools!

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.

BI Tool User Adoption Depends on Simplicity!

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!

Support Enterprise Agility with the Right Self-Serve BI Tools!

Enterprise Agility and Adaptability Are Crucial. The Right BI Tools Can Help!

Gartner research states that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’

Whether yours is a small or a large business, your success today depends upon your agility and adaptability and those characteristics also apply to your data and your information.

If you are to build a flexible business environment, you must have tools and solutions that allow you to monitor and manage data and information and use that data to make fact-based decisions.

‘Comprehensive BI Tools should provide data analytics access for all business users and, above all, provide flexible, agile solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data and report and communicate with clarity.’

When considering a business intelligence (BI) solution, choosing a self-serve tool serves two purposes:

Choose Self-Serve BI Tools to Support Business Success

Support for the Organization and Users

A business can provide software and tools for users, but if those tools are not user-friendly, or if team members do not perceive their value, they will not adopt the solution into their business processes. In order to ensure that the organization can expect a good return on investment (ROI) and a low total cost of ownership (TCO), the enterprise must select a BI tool that is useful to the team and can easily be applied to satisfy the needs of their role and their responsibilities. The tools must also provide self-serve tools that offer comprehensive predictive analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs), flexible reporting, self-serve data preparation, deep dive analytics, mobile BI and social BI. This foundation will allow business users to improve data literacy and perform analytics with confidence, thereby improving fact-based decision-making.

Flexibility and Agility

When the organization selects business intelligence tools that are flexible, users can leverage personalized dashboards and customize their use to serve the needs of their role, their team and their business unit. The ability to adapt quickly by finding the root cause of a problem, spotting a trend and addressing that trend or identifying an opportunity to improve competitive advantage can provide an edge in the market and allow the organization to move quickly. Users can collaborate and share data to make decisions and recommendations and suggestions are clearly supported by data, so there is no hesitation or delay.

‘If you are to build a flexible business environment, you must have tools and solutions that allow you to monitor and manage data and information and use that data to make fact-based decisions.’

Comprehensive BI Tools should provide data analytics access for all business users and, above all, provide flexible, agile solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data and report and communicate with clarity. Simple, Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals. Let us help you achieve your vision and improve productivity and insight across the organization.

Original Post : Choose Self-Serve BI Tools to Support Business Success!

Users Love Self-Serve BI and Cross-Tab Analytics!

Ensure Business Users Will Adopt BI Tools with Self-Serve BI and Cross-Tab Analytics!

Gartner has predicted that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’ Establishing the strategy is one thing, but getting business users to adopt an analytics and information-based business workflow is quite another.

‘Modern business intelligence tools that are designed with self-serve features makes it easy enough for every user (no matter their technical skill) to leverage analytics to report, share and collaborate.’

When it comes to teams, there are two things that are always true: 1) they learn a process and workflow and rarely want to change that familiar process and 2) they are always suspicious of ‘new’ initiatives and nearly always believe that these new initiatives will result in more work for them. There is a reason your team resists new processes and initiatives and that reason is simple. Usually, their fears are warranted!

So, if you want to engender support for new analytics initiatives and engage a business community in fact-based, action-oriented initiatives, you need to plan this new initiative with your users in mind.

In this article, we focus on two of the primary components of a new business user analytics initiative.

Enable User Adoption with Self-Serve BI and Cross-Tab Analytics

Self-Serve BI Tools

Modern business intelligence tools that are designed with self-serve features like smart data visualization, self-serve data preparation and assisted predictive modeling make it easy enough for every user (no matter their technical skill) to leverage analytics to report, share and collaborate. By adding value to the user’s everyday tasks and reducing the rework and issues they will confront, you can encourage your users to adopt analytics initiatives.

  • Any promotion of analytics strategy must clearly illustrate business use cases and benefits of these tools.
  • Support a more productive, streamlined environment that will allow them to do more with less and get the job done quickly.
  • Ensure that business users can collaborate and share and grow their own expertise and visibility.
  • Provide measurable results and information to make recommendations and support those recommendations.

Cross-Tab Analytics Capabilities

Those self-serve tools should include reporting and graphical tools that are clear and concise. Business users don’t want tools that produce complex reports filled with columns and mind-numbing numbers that do not help them reach a decision or illustrate an issue. Cross-tab analytics have been around for some time but the new, improved versions of this capability provides real insight into data in a way that is clear for every user. Sophisticated functionality is underpinned with easy-to-use tools so users can analyze the relationship between or among two or more variables and summarize data in rows and columns making it easy to understand the relationships and intersection of the various types of data. Understanding relationships in data is crucial to identifying the root cause of a problem or to targeting an issue or identifying a business opportunity. Your team members can work with multi-dimensional data and perform ad-hoc queries to gain a clear view of performance, dive into your data, and find and understand the data they need quickly and intuitively. Cross-tab analysis simplifies complex data operations, summary operations, time series functions, filters and custom column expressions and enables business users with simple tools they can really use.

‘If you want to engender support for new analytics initiatives and engage a business community in fact-based, action-oriented initiatives, you need to plan this new initiative with your users in mind.’

Business Intelligence tools can 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 : Enable User Adoption with Self-Serve BI and Cross-Tab Analytics!

Can Democratizing BI Use Help My Team?

Why is Business Intelligence Democratization Important for My Business?

Gartner research reveals that, ‘80% of organizations seeking to scale digital business will fail because they do not take a modern approach to data and analytics governance.’

If you are considering democratizing business intelligence gathering and analytics, you are not alone! Businesses today face more competition from local and global markets and every team member must work quickly and accurately in support of goals and objectives if the enterprise is to achieve its goals.

‘When senior executives and managers have reliable information and dependable recommendations and suggestions, they can improve performance and accuracy in forecasting, planning and demand.’

In this article, we discuss a few of the reasons a business should consider democratizing business intelligence and analytics within its team and how this type of initiative can be implemented to help your enterprise succeed.

Should I Democratize Business Intelligence in My Business?

Working Smarter

When you provide BI tools to your business users, you democratize data and begin to build a better understanding of the root cause of problems, the opportunities the business can leverage and the way forward to solving problems and creating business success. Team members can work smarter, with quick, concise access, and insight into data via self-serve solutions that streamline and simplify the typically complex analytical process and allow every team member to perform the analysis and, more importantly, to understand what the results are telling them.

Focusing on Core Responsibilities

When you democratize business intelligence and analytics with augmented analytics tools, IT team members, data scientists and business analysts can focus on strategic goals and on initiatives where data must be 100% accurate. Team members can use BI tools on a daily basis to test theories and gather and analyze information to support activities and tasks, collaborate with others and move forward, so EVERYONE can focus on their own roles and core responsibilities.

Supporting the Greater Good

When senior executives and managers have reliable information and dependable recommendations and suggestions, they can improve performance and accuracy in forecasting, planning and demand. Team leaders, business unit managers and others can realize long-term benefits and count on the fact that all team members are working with the right information, that information and analysis is based on current, integrated data and on measurable results. The organization can shift to a results-based environment where problems are analyzed and resolved and opportunities are leveraged to the greatest extent possible, so the enterprise can create an environment of continuous improvement.

Creating a Common Language

When all team members are using business intelligence to test theories and hypothesize, to solve problems and get to the root of a problem, to identify those all-important ‘nuggets’ of information that make a competitive difference, managers and executives can feel confident that the team is speaking a common language and that every team members knows how to find a problem, how to explain that problem and how to dependable recommendations to solve that problem.

‘Businesses should consider democratizing business intelligence and analytics within teams to help the enterprise succeed.’

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 : Should I Democratize Business Intelligence in My Business?