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Summary: Myths and Confusion in Business Intelligence

Debunking Common Business Intelligence Myths

A Summary of the Myths and Confusion in the Business Intelligence Market

This article series is entitled ‘Debunking Common Business Intelligence Myths’. The information presented in this, the seventh article of the series, summarizes the myths and cuts through the confusion to help you choose the right BI tool for your business and business users.

Myth #1 - All ’Self-Serve’ BI Tools Are Suitable for Business Users

Traditional Self-Serve BI tools have powerful desktop based tool offering connectivity to a variety of data sources, offers great visualization of data, and developer tools and designer interface to allow for design and development of dashboards, charts and reports. But, these tools are designed for developers and technical users - NOT for business users.

With a 100% browser based interface with Deep Dive Analytics capability business users can interact with data without technical expertise. Empower business users by letting them add new data, change data operations, change summary operations, change visualization and layout and even design dashboards, reports and cross tabs without programming skills.

Myth #2 - True Self-Serve BI Tools Will Compromise Data Governance

Accessibility, trust and usability of a BI solution is hampered by Data Anarchy. Data Anarchy occurs when:

• Critical data sources reside in the same repositories as ungoverned data
• Data is accessed directly with only high level security permission
• Multiple versions of the same data exist within the enterprise
• There is no Fine Grain Access Rights Management to control data access

A true, self-serve BI tool offers dependable, secured, Data Governance with IT controlled centralized semantic meta-data layer so business users can access data without direct access to underlying data sources. Governed Data Discovery allows users to gather, manage and deliver data in an interactive, friendly manner, without compromising data integrity, security or the source chain of data.

Myth #3 - Business Users Do Not Need Ad Hoc Data Analysis

Consider the BI tools in the market, and ask yourself whether these tools:

• Provide meta data layer that is easy for business users to understand and leverage
• Allow business users to bring in, integrate and view data in a single view
• Allow business users to create new columns and reports
• Support ad-hoc queries
• Enable business users to change data operations and summary operations on the fly

The answer to these questions is ‘no’. These tools do not satisfy the definition of self-serve BI. They do not empower users, they merely render prescribed dashboard designs and reports. Business users need access to ad-hoc analysis with a 360 degree data view, and the flexibility to interact with data from varied perspectives. If you want your users to drive business results, you must empower them with interactive ad hoc analytical tools.

Myth #4 - You Don’t Need KPIs and Balanced Scorecards to Manage Corporate Performance

Performance Management takes more than static displays and monitoring of gauges on an exotic dashboard.

Look for mobile, self-serve BI tool with flexible, intuitive KPI and Balanced Scorecards that are easy to implement and ready to use with business logic like polarity, frequency, break down and hierarchy of perspectives, objectives and measures. It takes experience, knowledge and domain expertise to design and implement solid, sophisticated metrics and combine theories and practices with simple, intuitive dashboards.

Myth #5 - It is Expensive and Time-Consuming to Give Mobile BI to Business Users

Every organization wants the advantage of Mobile BI and business user empowerment, and they want it quickly and with minimal investment. When an organization implements a so-called ‘self-serve, mobile BI’ solution, the obstacles become readily apparent.

Typical obstacles include:

• Design and development of multiple dashboards to fit disparate usability demands and use cases.
• Dashboard designs and development for each mobile operating system, e.g., iOs, Android and Windows mobile.
• Dashboard design and development for numerous screen resolutions for smartphones and tablets.

True self-serve BI is designed with an adaptive and responsive user interface and renders UI elements based on target device resolution. You don’t need different dashboards or BI objects for different devices. Bring Business Intelligence to life, in a 100% browser-based interface that operates on any device, with any resolution - Desktop, Laptop, Tablet, Smart Phones.

Myth #6 - You Need Data Scientists to Employ Predictive Analysis in Your Organization

True self-serve BI allows business users to easily and dependably predict results without the help of data scientists, analysts or programmers and become Citizen Data Scientists!

With Plug n’ Play Predictive Analysis Tools, business users can perform in-depth predictive to create time series forecasting, associative, clustering, classification and other predictive analytics using drag n’ drop functionality, without the help of a statistician or data scientist.

This seven-article series is meant to help your organization achieve a clearer picture of the possibilities of business intelligence and the opportunities available to those who seek to empower business users and gain a competitive advantage in their market of choice.

Articles in this seven article series include:

Myth #1 - All ’Self-Serve’ BI Tools Are Suitable for Business Users

Myth #2 - True Self-Serve BI Tools Will Compromise Data Governance

Myth #3 - Business Users Do Not Need Ad Hoc Data Analysis

Myth #4 - You Don’t Need KPIs and Balanced Scorecards to Manage Corporate Performance

Myth #5 - It is Expensive and Time-Consuming to Give Mobile BI to Business Users

Myth #6 - You Need Data Scientists to Employ Predictive Analysis in Your Organization

Original post: A Summary of the Myths and Confusion in Business Intelligence

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kartik Patel .