Self-Service Analytics
The rapid advances in technology have created opportunities that were unthinkable just a few years ago. In contrast to the strong IT-dependence of Business Intelligence, these new tools are empowering the business to turn data into value. You don’t need to be a programmer anymore to extract data from various sources and transform it to make it suitable for business decisions. As they range from BI to data science, we can group them self-service analytics tools.
What is self-service analytics?
Self-service analytics tools empower business users to connect to sources themselves, to model and transform the data, and to create interactive reports and dashboards. These intuitive tools often use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor on your data.
Why do you need self-service analytics?
There are lots of reasons why your company needs self-service analytics. Here’s a few:
- Reduce the quantity of data requests that your IT department has to handle
- Empower the business users to do their own data analysis as they know their business best
- Shorten the time needed to generate insights across the organisation
- Quickly generate one-off insights or carry out data experiments before making a decision
How can you implement self-service analytics?
With self-service analytics, there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution, which is why it’s important to start by understanding the levels of freedom and control your company wants and needs.
If you’re uncertain where to start, Cubis can help you establish your self-service analytics goals and ambitions before we draft and implement the perfect governance model for your unique situation.
Governance goes beyond technology. It’s the full story, showing how data, people, processes, and technology interact to arrive at the business outcomes you want.
For the best results, you need to be able to source the right data for your data model. This data is usually stored in a data warehouse where it is transformed, ready for use in validated reports.
Technologies for self-service analytics
When executing self-service analytics, it is vital that you pay attention to a few crucial elements:
- Is the tool right for your situation? It must support a wide range of data sources, provide visual ways to transform and model your data, and offer an intuitive way to create interactive reports and dashboards.
Our experience shows that Microsoft Power BI is the ideal solution for lots of organisations. - Can you find and understand your organisational data? A data catalogue that combines the benefits of Google and Wikipedia is a good starting point for understanding your data.
Technologies for self-service analytics
When implementing self-service analytics there are two elements that you need to pay attention to.
Firstly, the right tool is vital. It needs to support a wide variety of data sources, visual ways to transform and model your data, and provide an intuitive way to create interactive reports and dashboards. Our experience with both SAP and Microsoft technology has shown us that SAP Analytics Cloud and Power BI are the ideal solutions for a wide range of companies.
Secondly, it is essential that you can find and understand your organisational data. A data catalogue acts as your search and knowledge repository, supporting you in understanding and documenting insights.
How can Cubis help you with self-service analytics?
What is the status of your self-service analytics? Are you just about to take your first steps? Or is your self-service analytics initiative a victim of its own success? Whatever the status of your project, Cubis is ready to help your company get all the crucial components right – technology, culture, and processes – so you can take your self-service analytics to the next level and achieve incredible business results.
