Self Service Business Intelligence

Self-service business intelligence (BI) is an approach to data analytics that allows people without a background in BI or related activities like data mining and statistical analysis to access and examine data sets. Self-service BI technologies enable users to filter, sort, analyse, and display data without consulting the BI and IT departments of a company.

Self-service BI capabilities are used by companies to make it easier for employees, from executives to frontline workers, to gain relevant business insights from data collected in BI systems. The main objective is to encourage better-informed decision-making that leads to favourable company outcomes including enhanced efficiency, improved customer happiness, and increased revenue and profitability.

Benefits
• Self-service BI frees an organization’s BI and IT staff from developing the bulk of queries, visualisations, dashboards, and reports by allowing business users to execute their own ad hoc analysis. This frees them up to work on higher-value objectives and jobs that need more technical expertise, such as curating data sets for business users and writing complicated queries.
• Self-service features assist decrease bottlenecks in BI programmes by moving analytics work to business users rather than a small number of BI specialists, resulting in faster data analysis and decision-making. As a result, corporate processes are accelerated since users can examine data faster, make judgments, and take action.
• Self-service solutions may assist develop a completely data-driven culture in both the C-suite and company operations as more company leaders, managers, and workers use BI tools.
• Expanded data utilisation and faster decision-making may help an organisation become more agile as a whole, which may help it gain or keep a competitive advantage in the marketplace — especially if its use of self-service technologies is more extensive and effective than similar initiatives by competitors.

Difference between Traditional BI and Self-service BI
Traditional BI solutions work in a highly controlled environment, with access to data restricted to analysts or the IT staff. Users must first request data reports or dashboards, and then wait for analysts to provide the findings. This procedure produces bottlenecks and delays in the delivery of information necessary for timely decision-making.

Self-service BI systems include simple user interfaces that make dealing with data easier for those who aren’t technically savvy. Self-service BI systems operate best when they employ a centralised data model with standardised data definitions for all users to work with.Because everyone uses the same measurements and dimensions to uncover insights, this methodology offers a more trustworthy approach to data sharing.

Self-service BI enables all authorised people in your business to effortlessly access and analyse data, as well as produce reports with actionable findings that speak to your whole business.