Five ‘Must Haves’ in the Self-serving BI Tools

 

The world of business analytics has seen some major shifts in its analytical frame. The current demand for instant usability and conformability has made the traditional lengthy-process of getting out reports via business analyst or analysis-specific IT teams redundant. Even before the data reaches the actual business users for ultimate decision making, the time taken for the data travel and subsequent conversion causes it to expire upon arrival.

The rise of self-service business intelligence (BI) is indeed unfathomable. Several BI companies have established a strong foothold in BI and Gartner has also predicted that “self-service BI platforms will make up 80% of all enterprise reporting by 2020”. Self-service BI tools, as the term denotes, will not only eliminate the need for a mediator to transliterate the information into usable data but also help beat the time delay.

The major perk of a self-service BI tool is that, in comparison to a lot of BI data analytics tools in the market that require SQL developers or BI experts, a person of reasonable understanding would be able to use the tool’s dashboard to easily manipulate the data into the required track. Without any specialized training, the management, marketing, business development, or any controlling department within the business could easily access the businesses’ database to build the necessary reports to answer crucial business questions.

Here are the top 5 ‘must haves’ when you consider a self-service BI tool:

1.    One Stop Shop – The tool must be able to correlate data and not be a restricted user interface requiring multiple individuals to manually generate statistics and then have another one drive the final report. In short, one tool should be the one stop for all business needs.

2.    Easily Integrated – Tool should be easy to integrate into existing systems in order to be able to get it working without any delay or the requirement of a major system upgrade in the existing database. Adaptability is a priority.

3.    Real-time – Constant real-time update feasibility to ensure that the numbers are live and not require a constant error due to poor data feeds.

4.    Simplified Decision Making – Avoid “decision fatigue” that can be the downfall of a business. It is important for the BI tool dashboard to allow a user to ease of access to even high-end data processing so that warranted decisions can be taken without a glitch.

5.    Time & Money Saver – Lastly, the tool should not be a time or money consumer, because otherwise, businesses tend to take a negative approach towards the BI tool.

Bernard Marr, author of ― Big Data: Using SMART Big Data, Analytics and Metrics To Make Better Decisions and Improve Performance, stated that “As business leaders, we need to understand that lack of data is not the issue. Most businesses have more than enough data to use constructively; we just don’t know how to use it. The reality is that most businesses are already data rich, but insight poor.”  The scope of self-service BI tools is to try and cut through the precise data by having department specific users navigate through the abundant data and use it to their leverage instead of the traditional group of BI experts salvaging random data.

In nutshell, self-serving BI tools anticipate providing independent access to critical data without any constraints. Nevertheless, it is important to factor in that every tool needs regular maintenance and appraising without which an error-free analytics tool would completely collapse over time.