In today’s fast-paced business environment, analyzing data in real time to drive big decisions is a must in order to stay ahead of the competition. This is why more and more enterprises are employing business intelligence (BI) tools to deliver snapshots of the current state of their business as well as support their growing data analysis needs.
The influx of do-it-yourself BI
Business Intelligence capitalizes on software and services to convert data into actionable insights that can be used to make intelligent business decisions. Almost 50% of enterprises are expecting BI to deliver better decision making. This is because BI tools can analyze large quantities of data sets and present analytical findings in the form of reports, charts, graphs, and dashboards to provide users with detailed information of the state of their business. While classic BI is confined within IT who are more adept in analyzing data coming from different data stores, modern BI or self-service BI is for casual or non-technical users who need more flexibility and self-reliance in reporting and analysis.
The proliferation of self-service BI tools makes it possible for business users or non-technical staff to create actionable information quickly from their data without waiting for IT to generate the reports. Additionally, self-service BI tools empower business users to be more self-sufficient in filling any gaps in reports and backlogs that may exist in their organization. Its aim is to provide users with more freedom and responsibility at the same time.
Self-service BI is now becoming an accepted norm for organizations to accelerate the pace and agility of getting more people to work with data independently. But with a growing number of businesses leveraging more BI tools for employees to solve specific problems, it has created BI silos where data becomes duplicated and obstructed, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistent decisions across the organization.
Self-service BI governance is the key
With the abundance of self-service BI tools for end users, organizations have now realized that if they don’t have streamlined processes in place, their business decisions are bound to be inconsistent especially if they lack a common definition of data.
Thus, implementing self-service BI governance is a must to provide control over data standards as well as designate the essential roles and responsibilities within the organization. Governance ensures that reports reflect data context and meaning correctly as well as controls the level of access to them. It is the key to establish visibility and security over the reporting environment.
Self-service BI governance can be enabled through a report management hub. A unified report management hub provides a single access point where all the reports across the entire reporting environment as well as reporting tools are visible. It facilitates collaboration across users thereby increasing productivity. Leveraging a unified report management hub makes it possible to apply a uniform governance process regardless of the reporting tool.
ZenOptics offers its BI Analytics Catalogue that enables productivity, collaboration, manageability, and governance. In a single interface, ZenOptics provides direct access to all analytics assets, including reports, dashboards, spreadsheets, applications, and data.
Connect with our BI experts today to learn more on how your organization can streamline report management using self-service BI governance.
Published November 16, 2020