Business Intelligence is becoming ever more important for organizations. It can help harness the power of an organization’s data by reviewing, comparing, sorting, and reporting it in a way that is easy to comprehend. With business intelligence solutions, businesses can make more informed and actionable decisions. Of the benefits that can be reaped, businesses are able to streamline processes, automate tasks, increase productivity for workflows, and make more educated decisions.
What is Self-Service Business Intelligence?
Nowadays, self-service business intelligence is a high priority for many organizations. Not only is it important for businesses to have reporting and analytical capabilities, but organizations are starting to realize the benefit of having greater flexibility in these areas as well. The term might be familiar for those who use self-service HRIS solutions, which gives users (employees) more ability to take on tasks that otherwise might be centralized to the HR department. This can include allowing employees to make changes to their personal information. Essentially, self-service business intelligence allows users to be more self-sufficient in terms of leveraging organizational data. This allows for the decentralization of business intelligence.
Of course, the level of self-service would depend on the different users. Some may require more functionality, while others don’t need as much. Functionality can vary from the ability to filter or group data all the way to being able to pull together data from various sources to build customized reports. However, overall, self-service business intelligence can be a key way to help foster a culture of making data driven business decisions.
Businesses are collecting more data than ever before. Now, it is no longer sufficient to have data insights derived only through your analysts or IT department – this can result in bottlenecks and delays for many organizations. As we know, having access to accurate and timely data can help support key business decisions and separate you from the competition. Being able to act on insights quickly can give you a significant advantage.
With self-service business intelligence, users have greater control over their reports and dashboards. These can be modified to better suit their own uses and needs. For instance, each department may be tracking KPIs that are unique to their department. Self-service business intelligence enables greater customization to best cater to each end user. Users are able to have access to real-time data anytime and anywhere without the need to go through other departments. Ultimately, self-service business intelligence allows insights to be derived in a much more efficient manner.
Self-Service Business Intelligence vs. Business Intelligence
Traditionally, business intelligence relies on analysts or IT departments to query the data that they have been collecting. This is how they would generate reports and forecasts. As it can be assumed, this results in longer wait times before insights can be retrieved, especially when compared to if the power were to be put into the hands of the end-users themselves. This is where self-service business intelligence is key. By allowing users to have greater control over the analysis of their own data, they can have greater visibility and access to more real-time insights. This access to more timely data can help foster more accurate business decision making. Overall, self-service business intelligence can help empower more of your organization to make data driven business decisions. Especially relative to traditional business intelligence solutions, self-service allows for a much more flexible and efficient manner of deriving data insights.
Conclusion
Self-service business intelligence has remained a priority for many organizations over the years. In fact, many organizations are already leveraging self-service business intelligence solutions without even realizing it. In implementing self-service business intelligence at your organization, it’s important to balance the fine line between flexibility and data governance. Contact BAASS today to find a business intelligence solution fit for your organization!
