Eliminates time wasted searching for reports with intuitive employee experience
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ZenOptics, the analytics catalog industry pioneer, gives employees a personalized experience to simplify the discovery of analytics assets used across the enterprise. ZenOptics has seen rapid growth fuelled by businesses needing to utilize analytics investments as a competitive advantage.
Analytics consumers, anyone within an enterprise that needs access to an analytics asset such as a report, dashboard, key performance indicator (KPI), and even spreadsheets, word processing, and presentation documents, are often overwhelmed by the volume and diversity of analytics tools and assets. When employees access an asset, there is little confidence in ungoverned insights and if the information is correct and up to date.
These challenges present significant barriers causing analytics investments to underperform and go underutilized. In fact, just over 14% of employees use the Business Intelligence (BI) software the organization has invested in [BARC, 2022], creating financial pressures, poor reporting, and a challenging work environment. The average company uses more than 360 applications, and unless the employee experience is simplified, these issues will only worsen over time.
“Every part of an organization uses multiple tools and apps to collect and analyze important data, so this isn’t isolated to the finance or sales teams, said Saurbh Khera, Founder, and CEO, ZenOptics. “By using advanced integration and machine learning (ML) technologies, we’ve addressed these challenges by simplifying what is critical to this new analytics consumer, reducing the clutter they typically sort through. By presenting reports and dashboards in a consumable employee experience, report users significantly reduce the time spent searching for these assets.”
Businesses need more of their workers to use more of the analytics investments if they want to move quickly and adapt to changing conditions. ZenOptics helps organizations address several emerging challenges:
Drain on resources: Teams are constantly wrestling with tool complexity and access across most organizations, causing a severe drain on time and resources. The average knowledge worker spends about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information [IDC]. ZenOptics provides each employee with a personalized view of the assets they use most frequently.
Inaccurate reporting: 44% of users occasionally or frequently made a wrong decision because they did not have the information they needed. In addition, 43% of users reported occasionally or frequently overlooking important information because of too many applications or the volume of information [Gartner]. ZenOptics ensures that analytics assets are verified and accurate.
Lack of speed and agility: Every business function today needs access to analytics assets, so a centralized model doesn’t work. In that environment, for teams requesting access to internal data beyond their departmental remit, the response time could be measured in months in 53% of cases [McKinsey]. ZenOptics puts the right assets in the hands of the analytics consumer.
Distributed operations: Businesses are embracing a growing remote workforce and have highly distributed operations – geographically, location-operations centers, warehouses, stores and client locations. ZenOptics ensures the analytics consumer has the right level of access depending on their role, location, responsibilities and other factors.
These challenges are fuelling ZenOptics’ continued growth and momentum. The company grew 150% year-over-year in 2021 and nearly doubled the number of customers which include Brown-Forman, Janney Montgomery Scott, and Benjamin Moore.
ZenOptics has also been growing globally, with a 300 percent increase in customers across Europe. To better support this growth, ZenOptics recently announced the opening of a new European office in London.
“ZenOptics fills a major gap in the current analytics landscape as companies grapple with shifting from producing more and more to making better use of what they already have,” said Donald Farmer, Principal, TreeHive Strategy. “With ZenOptics, organizations can maximize the value of their analytics investments by increasing usage and improving consumability for a broader population of analytics consumers.”
ZenOptics, recognized in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Analytics, enables analytics producers and consumers to align around the business objective to better assess, optimize and scale the impact of analytics across the organization. By providing employees with a high-quality experience, they’re at least 1.5 times more likely to have high levels of work effectiveness, productivity, discretionary effort, and intent to stay at their current employer [Gartner].
In addition to providing a better employee experience, ZenOptics analytics workspace empowers leaders to compose and share analytic flows using fit-for-purpose tools, interlocked with policies for governance, quality, and compliance to better integrate into the business context.
ZenOptics helps organizations maximize the value of their analytics investments by increasing usage and improving consumability for a broader population of analytics consumers. ZenOptics’ analytics catalog provides a personalized experience to simplify the discovery of analytics assets generated within the entire ecosystem of tools and applications already in use at organizations today. An intuitive analytics workspace empowers consumers to compose and share analytics flows using fit-for-purpose tools interlocked with policies for governance, quality, and compliance to better integrate into the business context. Personalized dashboards enable analytics producers and consumers to mine intelligence from connections between teams and assets to align analytics work with business objectives and better assess, optimize, and scale the impact of analytics.
ZenOptics was recognized in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Analytics.
For many people, their place of work has moved much closer. The hectic rush hour on crowded roads or on packed public transport has been replaced by a quick journey along the landing or down the garden to the home office. In due course, many will return to the previous way of working in central office locations, but it seems highly likely that the “New Normal” will be marked by more people than ever before working remotely – particularly since it has only accelerated an existing trend of enabling remote workers.
We all know that many advantages are proffered for home working, and indeed I am a great fan of doing so. Of course, there is a range of technology that helps with online meetings and other forms of office communication, but there is also a danger that matters that would have been covered in the informal interaction between colleagues in an office will be missed. We no longer have the coffee machine chats, the quick conversation with the colleague at the next desk, five minutes grabbed “on the fly” with the boss, and so forth. This impacts us all but it’s especially acute among younger and, thereby, less-experienced employees. Personally, I can vividly remember in my early career how I was rescued from several professional “faux pas” after a few wise words from a more senior colleague! Would I be so fortunate now?
I have spent most of my recent career in the analytics industry, so not surprisingly my thoughts have wandered to how this challenge might play out in that world.
Let’s imagine you are searching for a report. One obvious way of starting this process would be to see if anyone has produced anything like this before, and that may likely involve asking around your office. If you are working remotely, that informal collaboration is not so easy. In today’s data-centric world, business users were already faced with the challenge of finding reports and the necessity of trying to work out which, if any, were relevant to their needs. Now that challenge is compounded because everyone is working from different locations. Enterprise data and documents are scattered all over the virtual work ecosystem. Even once access is set up to the ecosystem from remote locations, this “virtual clutter” makes it even harder to determine who owns what data or report, particularly when business users are using different BI and analytics tools.
Report clutter kills productivity. The ability to search a catalogue of reports to identify the right reports for your needs – and reports that are similar that could provide additional insights – would save you time. If you can readily see the wheel online then you won’t need to reinvent it! And wouldn’t it be even better if the available reports were rated as to their suitability for particular purposes by appropriately qualified colleagues?
These are among the business challenges that ZenOptics can help solve, thereby dramatically improving your decision-making process – regardless of where you may be working.
Find out more about how ZenOptics makes finding the right reports at the right time easier, read our white paper “Report Management in the New Normal – A Guide for COOs.”
Many thanks to Peter McQuade, vice president of Alliances and Channels at ZenOptics, for authoring this blog.
Global analyst firm Gartner has unveiled its “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends in Data and Analytics for 2021.” It expects data and analytics worlds to “collide,” creating convergences in technologies, the roles of data and analytics workers, and processes. By 2023, decision intelligence will be a focus for many with more than 33% of large organizations expected to have analysts practicing decision intelligence, including decision modeling.
During the most recent Gartner Symposium, research VP Rita Sallam, presented that by 2023, 95% of Fortune 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics strategic initiatives as part of an enterprise information strategy.
“Analytics” is how people use insights from data to inform decision-making and achieve business objectives. “Governance” establishes guidelines and guardrails to ensure your data and analytic processes are being deployed as efficiently as possible. “Analytics governance” is a modern, redefined governance for enabled users that ensures information is both trusted and utilized properly throughout the analytics lifecycle. Similarly, “report governance” focuses on accurate, appropriate use of information for decision-making.
According to McKinsey, executives in every industry must shift from a data-governance model of loosely followed guidelines to report and analytics governance that makes the most of how people use data and analytics to create value.
Although the current users of big data and big analytics are primarily big corporations, reports and analytics governance could be equally advantageous in assisting decision-makers of small-to-medium-sized businesses across industries.
Structured use of data. With analytics governance, you can establish procedures and guidelines that ensure your analytics activities align with an enterprise information strategy. By establishing processes and organization structures, you can be certain that people recognize the importance of governance roles and their work is respected.
Simplified compliance. Whether regulated by industry watchdogs, by government, or self-regulated, analytics governance is a critical aspect of ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements.
Better decision-making. As with any organization, well-governed reports and analytics are better understood, more reliable, and more discoverable – making it easier for users to pull trusted, relevant, and useful data. This allows you to drive more business value from your data, as well as ensure clear accountability and ownership for more productive and confident decision-making.
Reduced risks. All the aforementioned benefits of analytics governance lead to improved operational efficiencies and reduced risks.
Getting started with report and analytics governance initiatives can seem daunting, and similar efforts often go amiss. Whether you are a traditional incumbent company or an emerging start-up, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. ZenOptics can help you establish and grow your governance program
ZenOptics’ Enterprise Decision Platform provides:
Powerful Metadata. Report usage metadata can show that a particular author develops reports that are frequently used. ZenOptics’ enterprise decision platform enables access to reusable, active metadata that can improve trust in information and reduce time to data delivery.
Certified Reports. Business users will benefit from a governed environment that offers automation with workflows and report certification for driving decisions.
Continuous Compliance. ZenOptics can help you navigate operational decision complexities, including adherence to regulations by practicing compliance-centric reporting.
While the benefits of analytics governance will differ for each organization, there is predictable business value it can deliver: improve decision-making processes that will drive sound business outcomes.
Are you ready to explore ZenOptics’ decision confidence platform and learn how it can influence business outcomes and behavior in your organization? Request a demo today.
Saying that “Data is king” still holds. Now more than ever, people are generating huge amounts of data every day—from social media to the Internet of Things (IoT) people have at their homes or offices. With the exponential growth of connected products and almost 4.57 billion active internet users, data creation is only poised to grow more as time goes by.
All of this data contributes to the wealth of enterprise information that organizations can analyze to find insights. A cohesive business intelligence and analytics environment that provides visibility into all enterprise information and reports will help businesspeople be able to deliver value from these analytic assets.
Further, since traditional data governance is designed to control only a small, critical subset of data, it is no longer sufficient in today’s massive data landscape. Organizations need a governed environment – encompassing all enterprise information and reports – where analysts and businesspeople can benefit from trusted data as they make operational decisions and do their daily work.
According to an IDC survey, more than half of businesses indicated a lack of trust in the results of their data analysis, as more and more data users are exploring various analytics tools without a proper governance perspective. Difficulty in keeping a unified approach in this complex landscape may result in more serious consequences for non-compliance.
Thus, organizations need to look beyond traditional data governance. In this age of modern data and analytics, a change of mindset is necessary—that which not only focuses on data but also on its reporting and analytics.
ZenOptics’ Decision Confidence Platform presents three keys on how to have a governed environment that will drive better decisions for your organization.
Empowering your businesspeople and analysts with a governed reporting environment of all enterprise information assets will not only drive better decisions but also ensure standardization and consistency as information is used from across the enterprise. To learn more, request a demo today!
Digitalization has given rise to innovations in technology to keep up with the rapid growth of data, as well as help turn this vast amount of data into insights. From traditional spreadsheets to Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, organizations today are transforming their businesses to be data-driven. Research shows that the Business Intelligence market is projected to reach $39.35 billion by 2027. Part of the BI market growth is due to the increasing adoption of self-service BI and reporting solutions that empower business people to work with their respective data independently with minimal help from IT.
The proliferation of reporting tools makes it possible for more and more people to access multiple BI applications so they can view and manipulate their reports. But as the number of applications increases, the number of risks also rises. Multiple applications mean multiple reports existing in multiple, isolated systems which can lead eventually to inconsistent information.
Gartner’s research shows that while Business Intelligence solutions have been around for quite some time, user adoption is still hovering at only 30 percent. These numbers show the gap between the data and information that is available for analytics and software user adoption to conduct the analysis. If people do not know the reports exist in a BI tool, then the proliferation of BI reporting tools potentially creates more challenges than it addresses.
There are numerous reasons why reports can remain unused, but the most notable ones are:
When reports exist in disparate systems, it creates an incomplete picture of enterprise information, thus reducing users’ confidence in BI reports.
It is not enough to just provide report users with BI tools to help with their data. Poor user adoption usually stems from not having enough communication with them during the implementation stage. For this reason, the low adoption rate can be caused by the following:
Report users must familiarize themselves with the reporting tool. If users do not have enough knowledge on how to use the BI tool, then they will just remain with the status quo.
According to Bain’s survey, 66% of executives report that digital disruption and software solutions are rapidly changing the rules of competition. However, there is still major concern about increasing user adoption so that the tools can turn data into a competitive advantage. Thus, it is paramount to consult report users that directly use the BI reporting tool. If report users think that such a tool is just an additional step to their work routine, they may not see its value.
In order to maximize the investment in BI solutions and increase adoption, it is important to simplify the experience for the user. Providing a single pane of interaction for businesspeople to seamlessly switch from one tool to another and access information from across the enterprise BI and analytics ecosystem is a must. ZenOptics addresses the problems caused by too many BI tools and disparate data sources. It provides a single interface to connect to all analytics assets with portal-like capabilities and establishes an analytics catalog, governance, and statistics to guide the usage of information. The ZenOptics Decision Confidence Platform makes it possible to have frictionless access to cross-platform information assets so report users can significantly enjoy better governance, control, and visibility with just a single point of access as they make business decisions.
To request a demo, connect with our BI experts today!
When it comes to business, decision-making is a crucial task, but it is also one of the most difficult. Data-driven organizations recognize the importance of using the right data at the right time to make decisions, but finding and accessing that data can be a challenge when vital pieces of information are scattered among disparate BI and analytics platforms in the organization. These information silos create challenges and introduce uncertainty in the decision-making process.
As companies empower employees with BI and analytics to work with data, what often happens is that the number of tools and applications in the ecosystem grows rapidly due to infrastructure needs and preferences. This creates siloed information and a lack of visibility into all the analytics assets that exist and are available – and often necessary – to make decisions. So what exactly are the problems that arise from having disparate systems?
Inefficiency. The ease of doing any given task largely depends on whether or not you have reasonable access to your tools. In 2018, a study conducted by Braintree said that employees use 10-15 applications on average for their work. These employees lose valuable time not only switching between platforms and signing in to each, but this also disrupts thought processes and requires refocused attention to proceed with the intended task. This is just a peek into the inefficiency that happens when a business contends with information scattered in disparate systems. Wouldn’t it be better to provide a single point of access to allow employees to seamlessly view and use all the information assets of the company?
Vulnerability. The more complex the decision, the more risk can be introduced in the process. Each added step or connection not only wastes time, it increases the likelihood of something going wrong. At best, this could simply cause a misstep or give your company a minor headache. The worst that could happen is you’ll have a disaster in your hands. Simplifying the decision-making process with a platform that provides guardrails and assurances can reduce the vulnerability.
Poor Decisions. Frequent, consistent operational decisions are necessary in order to run the business well. Without access to all the relevant information to make operational decisions, companies risk making bad decisions and pushing the organization forward perhaps in the wrong direction. When you have a clear picture into all the appropriate factors impacting your business decisions, you are better able to position yourself for the best possible outcomes and be competitive for the future. Recognizing the analytic assets available to you is part of confidently moving forward.
Unnecessary Spending. At the end of the day, every factor that can affect your operations shifts your profits and bottom line. And most of those listed above can really pull you down. It costs a pretty penny to deal with disparate systems, so. This is another area where a single platform that catalogs cross-platform analytic assets and supplies usage statistics will pay off.
ZenOptics presents concrete solutions to the problems caused by siloed, isolated BI and analytics. It supports operational decision making by providing a single point of access to information, an analytics catalog with associated metadata from the source systems, report and analytics governance, and usage statistics for optimizing the environment. Using the ZenOptics Decision Confidence Platform, decision-makers can enjoy simplified access to information, visibility into all the information available, and the guardrails of a governed environment.
The ZenOptics Decision Confidence Platform is based on three major pillars:
Access. With the integration established by smart connectors, ZenOptics ensures that customers are able to easily retrieve relevant information, regardless of which platform it exists within. ZenOptics gives you better insight through a catalog of information assets, automated metadata, and inherited security and authorizations for smooth access.
Assure. It’s not enough to have data available. It’s also crucial to organize and govern these assets so that they flow through prescribed paths for usability. ZenOptics gives you the ability to certified reports, map ideal workflows, deliver recommendations, and even standardize terms with BI glossary.
Accelerate. The features within the acceleration layer contribute to a consistent, efficient decision-making process for you. This is perfect for collaboration and communication between teams or for setting “favorites” for a personalized work experience. Other features available are workflow automation, usage statistics, and cross-platform search.
Among those who will benefit from this are business users and analysts, BI stewards, and IT Management. ZenOptics can deliver increased productivity and confidence in decision-making, a governed environment for driving decisions, and financial optimization of BI and Analytics investments.
People create around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day, and that rate of data creation grows at an incredible rate. This incredible amount translates to… more data than businesses can ever hope to handle without the right tools. Thankfully, technology does not disappoint in granting enterprises the tools that they need to harness all these bytes into pieces of information that drive business decisions and increase the potential for growth. One of the best of these tools is Business Intelligence (BI).
In the 1960s, Business Intelligence was defined as a system for information-sharing within organizations. Two decades after, it developed into the early model of its current iteration: modes for data-centric decision-making alongside computer models. Today, it is a specific offering that is designed to help businesses take advantage of data — the priceless new commodity — to:
However, BI does not always have a streamlined process to follow. Further, many organizations have multiple BI and analytics tools across the enterprise. Businesses with disparate data in these different tools still need to access and understand the information across these silos to ensure proper and comprehensive analyses. Failing to do so not only delivers poor ROI on your BI investment, it can hinder the organization’s ability to make informed decisions.
For virtually every business, disparate data is an inevitability. Different departments need different information, which results in the generation of different data assets. Similarly, some organizations still use legacy systems, which house their data. In addition, onboarding several enterprise applications onto your IT infrastructure will clog up your data pipelines and leave you with a lot to work with.
If your BI ecosystem cannot deal with disparate data, your business stands at risk of:
ZenOptics’ platform provides direct access to all of your analytics assets, including reports, dashboards, spreadsheets, applications, and data, even if they are from disparate systems.
Our platform is engineered to provide a single interface to quickly view the reports from disparate analytic resources across the enterprise. This increases productivity for knowledge workers who use multiple analytic platforms daily, improves efficiency for information stewards who govern analytics and data assets, and assists IT management who oversee the TCO of analytic and reporting systems. Its features include:
Save 25% on licensing costs today! Request a demo here.
Competition in the business intelligence market is heating up. Research shows that the industry is expected to nearly double in value from over $15 billion in 2016 to nearly $30 billion in 2022. This means corporations are faced with a steadily increasing number of business intelligence systems to choose from, especially as technology continues its rapid advancement.
As a decision-maker looking for the best BI system to fit your company, how can you choose which will work best? What are the key features that you should be looking for in an effective BI system?
In order to determine which features of a product are important, it’s necessary to first list down the objectives driving your decision to use it. According to a study conducted by Dresner Advisory Service, the hierarchy of business intelligence objectives has remained mostly steady since 2017. The 2020 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study gives the following ranking:
The study surveyed people spread out across geographies, functions, organization sizes, and vertical industries, who chose several qualities that would determine if a product is mature: completeness of functionality, integration with third-party technologies, overall usability, and reliability of technology. The same study found that the following features are considered most important by companies:
The 2020 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study further lists dozens of other features ranked according to respondents’ assessments. Aside from those listed above, among the top priorities are self-service, advanced visualization, data discovery, data storytelling, and cloud. In contrast, the lowest priorities in 2020 are voice and video analytics, RPA, edge computing, complex event processing, IoT, and social media analysis. Take note that these are just the top features according to statistics; in the end, it would be up to you to determine what kind of functionality your company needs the most.
If it hasn’t been stressed enough before, business intelligence matters. And how you go about navigating this complex world can determine your success or failure. Every company, corporation, or business is different, and the “perfect” BI system depends on your own specific needs. So ask yourself, what is important to you?
Solutions offered by ZenOptics are tailor-fit to your specific needs. The ZenOptics analytics catalog offers powerful and easy-to-use tools that enable productivity, collaboration, manageability, and governance. In a single interface, you get direct access to all your analytics assets, including reports, dashboards, spreadsheets, applications, and data.
With the massive leaps that technology has taken over the decades, managing business has become vastly different. In a lot of ways, access to more advanced tools–least of which is the internet–has made life easier for business owners and leaders. However, this has also given people much more complexity to cope with.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that business intelligence environments in the past were simple. Various industries have always had to deal with some sort of complexity, including unexpected challenges or problems that pop up. One of the main differences between then and today is the sheer amount of information that businesses have to deal with. What used to be simple systems and interactions before have grown complex partly and ironically because of the technology intended to simplify things in the first place.
As one example, consider a small bakery. Such a business 30 years ago would have been concerned about comparatively fewer things. This may include inventory, employee salary, ingredients, other expenses, and profit. Nowadays, it would also have to deal with social media pages, walk-in sales vs online orders, Yelp reviews, CCTV security, and other concerns on top of those previously listed. It doesn’t necessarily mean that things have gotten harder, just more complex. This is especially true for bigger companies that deal with more diverse industries.
One of the reasons for unnecessary complexity is report duplication. There are several reasons why this happens, but generally this stemmed from systems growing more advanced and starting to interconnect with each other. And when there are several points generating and storing information, it often results in data being unnecessarily duplicated.
It may seem like duplicate data will have little effect on an organization. After all, there’s a saying that goes “It’s better to have and not need, than need and not have.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t really apply in the business world where almost everything has a corresponding cost. The fact is, report duplication can have severe repercussions, including inefficiency, poor cost management, unnecessary data storage, and ineffective customer service.
In order to deal with duplicate data and reports, it is necessary to be able to recognize them first. There are a few ways to make this easier:
Standardize. It’s easier to handle multiple streams of data when all the people and divisions within an enterprise are guided by the same standards. Aside from this, streamlining the workflow will also help identify and remove operational overlaps that may be causing duplicate reporting.
Merge related data. Establishing connections between records should be the first step to take before either deleting or merging them. The latter is usually preferable, given that there is inherent value in all kinds of data. Having a single master record is better than having several separate but related files.
A BI Platform enables you to collate, organize, and analyze data from different sources. This will allow you to more easily identify duplicate reports and take steps to remove redundancies or merge data as necessary. You can get direct access to all analytics assets, giving you better visibility and allowing you to address problems like distributed or duplicate reporting.
Complexity has always been a constant when it comes to business. And when it comes to business intelligence, the best way to address this complexity is to understand what kind of data you have and organize them so they are as simple and straightforward as possible.
Tools like the ZenOptics analytics catalog are invaluable when it comes to navigating today’s complex BI environment. They enable productivity, collaboration, manageability and governance. And ultimately, these tools allow businesses to drastically reduce costs and improve their number one priority: the bottom line.
We have various plans that can be tailor fit to your specific needs. Contact us today!