Collecting, managing, and presenting data from different sources has been around for quite a while, but it’s seen significant changes. Because of the constant increases in Business Intelligence, that has been a tremendous change in the way businesses accumulate, assess, and present the data.
Organizations have been taking Self-Service BI as a high priority since 2017 because of its impeccable and seamless analytic and reporting abilities. It is all about offering organizations more self-sufficiency and flexibility in terms of using the business information that can further lead to better business outcomes.
“BI is an umbrella term to describe concepts and methods to improve business decision-making by using fact-based support systems.”
There are three types of people who benefit the most from Self-Service BI
- Business analysts make up to 5 percent of the users where they expect the Self-Service BI to support essential tasks like data exploration.
- Power users use 25 percent of Self-Service BI, where they need a lot of functionality and flexibility to use data to solve business issues and analyze to develop reports and dashboards.
- Standard users, who have limited BI skills, use approximately 70 percent Self-Service BI for making dynamic reports and dashboards used for further analysis.
The Self-Service BI is extensively used for four main requirements, i.e.
1. Creating data models for compelling reports
For the business analysts, in specific scenarios, self-service BI is highly needed to create the data models in a much more independent way where the data model is built and is given to the business users where they further use the model delete to build compelling reports. In the business department’s requirements, the data modeling is done in a ‘sandbox.’ Every organization must define a particular data management strategy to arrive at the best approach.
2. Crafting dashboards and specific reports
Creating multiple dashboards and reports is not just done by IT anymore. Now the Power BI users can craft specific reports and dashboards through report templates, tools, and dashboards to support other end users.
3. Assimilation of local and private data
Assimilation of the local and private data into the current reports and data modules is often essential. This data is usually taken from external sources, flat files, and Excel documents. More details can be brought into the reports by connecting to additional information from flat files. With the help of self-service, organizations can rapidly assimilate the data into reports.
4. Alteration of dashboards and reports
The Self-Service BI helps businesses alter the dashboards and reports extensively where the reports can be designed and developed. Self-service users can create reports with the help of their leading indicators in the best possible ways. Analyses regarding specific needs can be created independently where further new insights are derived.
These critical features of Self-Service BI are significant reasons businesses use it to extract transparent, seamless, and helpful information to make effective business decisions. The main reason for shifting to Self-Service BI is to improve each business department’s flexibility and agility without requiring significant support from their IT department.