Understanding the role of a Citizen Data Scientist and the opportunities provided by this approach is the first step in leveraging the Citizen Data Scientist approach. Engaging a vendor and choosing the right Augmented Analytics Business Intelligence tools, services, training and deployment will ensure success. The prospect of transforming business users into Citizen Data Scientists may seem daunting but, with the appropriate planning and support, and the appropriate Augmented Analytics solution, the initiative can be extremely successful.
Fact-Based Analytics and Citizen Data Scientists = Results
So, you want your business users to embrace and use analytics? You want your business to enjoy the benefits of fact-based decision making? You want your business to use the tools of business intelligence to improve market presence, customer satisfaction and team productivity and collaboration?
‘Whether you are trying to solve a business problem, get to the heart of that problem, find a business opportunity, predict the need for resources, new products or locations or understanding changes in your customer buying behavior, you don’t have time to learn complex tools or take training in analytics.’
Gartner has predicted that, ‘a scarcity of data scientists will no longer hinder the adoption of data science and machine learning in organizations.’ And that is the good news. But, if the business is to leverage the potential of analytics within the organization, it must choose the right analytics tools to ensure that business users will adopt analytics in day-to-day tasks.
If your enterprise wishes to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists and use augmented analytics to gain a competitive advantage, it must provide easy-to-use tools that do NOT require team members to be business analysts or IT professionals – tools that allow users to quickly gather data using self-serve data preparation, using data integrated from disparate data repositories with smart data visualization to view, format and share results that are clear, concise and actionable.
The business market is more competitive than ever and in today’s environment it isn’t enough to simply analyze historical data. To make good business decisions, adjust strategies and forecast and plan, you must use that historical data to plan for the future.
Businesses that can gather data from disparate sources and use historical data to understand trends and patterns and forecast for the future can establish and sustain a competitive advantage and plan more effectively and accurately, avoiding missteps in the market and costly mistakes.
If your business wishes to sustain a competitive advantage, if you as a user wish to advance in your career and build your value to the organization, it is incumbent upon you to embrace the trend of data democratization, data literacy and self-serve, augmented analytics.
Today, augmented analytics and smart data discovery make it easier for business users, data scientists, IT staff and the organization to benefit from fact-based decision-making, collaboration, data literacy and the ability to easily, gather, integrate and analyze data.
Whether you are trying to solve a business problem, get to the heart of that problem, find a business opportunity, predict the need for resources, new products or locations or understanding changes in your customer buying behavior, you don’t have time to learn complex tools or take training in analytics.
What you need are apps and solutions that allow you to ask easy questions in your own words and receive guidance and recommendations on how to best visualize and present your data and what techniques to use to gain the most insight.
Use a simple low-code, no-code analytics platform and augmented analytics and BI tools designed for business users with real-world business cases to find answers and solve problems. You can untangle quality and maintenance issues, refine customer targeting and marketing optimization, make appropriate financial investment decisions, and even use external data to analyze trends and patterns and make forecasts and predictions, helping users and the business to achieve success in industries and businesses like retail, pharmacy and wellness, insurance, manufacturing, government and public sector, utilities, and other industries.
‘If your enterprise wishes to transition business users into Citizen Data Scientists and use augmented analytics to gain a competitive advantage, it must provide easy-to-use tools that do NOT require team members to be business analysts or IT professionals.’
To find out more about how to ensure Return on Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) results, gain a competitive market advantage, and enable user adoption, read our free White Paper, ‘A Roadmap To ROI And User Adoption Of Augmented Analytics And BI.’ Explore The Benefits of our Augmented Analytics And BI Tools, Contact Us. Keep pace with changing enterprise needs and support business agility. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information, and flexible, scalable technology solutions that will support Citizen Data Scientist initiatives, and improved data literacy and data democratization.
Gartner predicts that ‘organizations that offer users access to a curated catalog of internal and external data will derive twice as much business value from analytics investments as those that do not.’ In order to make the most of the data that resides in all the corners of your enterprise, you must make sense of that data, and leverage it to create products and services, to compete in your market of choice and refine your workflow and tasks to improve productivity and agility.
The key to making the most of your data is analytics, and the ability to gather and analyze data and produce results that are intuitive and clear. Machine learning has evolved to support the average business user with tools and techniques that make it easier to gather and analyze data using simple techniques that are supported by analytical techniques, without requiring business users to have data science skills.
‘Auto Insights analytics allows business users to select the dataset to be analyzed, and let the system do the rest.’
Today’s business users expect to have access to software solutions and techniques that are easy to understand and navigate. As consumers, they have the world at their fingertips, with simple techniques that require little to no technical knowledge. If your enterprise plans to adopt augmented analytics tools and business intelligence techniques, it must provide simple tools that are easy enough for the average business users to incorporate into workflow and tasks. This approach will help the organization achieve its analytical goals while ensuring an appropriate return on investment (ROI) and decreasing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). It can also encourage and enable Citizen Data Scientist initiatives and improve data literacy.
The Auto Insights approach to analytics provides a foundation of Assisted Predictive Modeling and easy-to-use tools, making it simple enough for every business user to adopt as an important tool in the team toolkit, and supporting the path from business user to Citizen Data Scientist, with tools that encourage data literacy.
Auto Insights frees business users and reduces the time and skills required to produce accurate, clear results, quickly and dependably, using machine learning that frees the business user to collect and analyze data with the guided assistance of a ‘smart’ solution.
Auto Insights allows business users to select the dataset to be analyzed, and let the system do the rest. The tool will interpret the dataset, select important columns of data, analyze its type and variety and other parameters and then use intelligent machine learning to automatically apply the best algorithm and analytical technique and provide data insight so the user can easily see and understand the results.
The Auto Insights concept is applied to data repositories to enable the enterprise and its business users to perform complex data analytics and share analysis across the organization in a self-serve, mobile environment, bringing the power of sophisticated, advanced analytics and smart data visualization to the members to automate and analyze, so enterprise users can quickly get the answers they need and move on to make confident decisions.
‘The key to making the most of your data is analytics, and the ability to gather, analyze and view data easily, and produce results that are intuitive and clear.’
If you are interested in finding out more about the advantages of the Smarten Auto Insights approach to Augmented Analytics and self-serve search analytics, Contact Us to explore how these techniques can help your enterprise apply analytics to achieve results. Let us help you realize your business goals and objectives with fact-based information.
When the business undertakes a Mobile BI initiative, it must plan carefully to ensure success, achieve rapid return on investment (ROI) and achieve low total cost of ownership (TCO).
There are four primary goals of this exercise:
Improve Collaboration and Productivity
Streamline Decision-Making
Optimize Time and Resources by Providing Business Users with Intuitive Tools
Engender an Environment That Will Support Citizen Data Scientists
‘Be sure that the mobile business intelligence solution you choose supports a seamless user experience, and allows users to easily see dashboards, reports etc.’
To achieve these goals, you must assess existing workflow and business processes and ensure that users can incorporate mobile business intelligence within team tasks and activities, that IT can support the environment and that managers can make the best use of the data presented by the team.
Review and Address Culture and Workflow – Take a look at a) the technical skills and technology use of your users, managers and executives, and understand how and when they use data. How is data used (if at all) to make decisions, or gain approval? In order to make the best use of Mobile BI, you will want to integrate this solution into the day-to-day process, and be sure that there is an access loop for executives and managers to receive and review data from users.
Establish Objectives and Metrics – We discussed the fact that you must understand your requirements, but you should also use those requirements to define objectives for the project and to set metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will tell you that the users are leveraging the mobile business intelligence solution, and that the data produced is having a positive impact on organizational goals. Be sure to create a review process for metrics, so that you can identify trends and modify metrics and processes to adapt to change.
Review Data Accessibility and Quality – Ensure that your users have access to accurate data. Do you have a process in place to allow for data gathering, cleansing and validation? Have you eliminated redundant or duplicate records? Is the data you wish to use in Mobile BI easily integrated and accessible? Your users will not want to go to another source to get information so, if you want them to use Mobile BI tools, you must make the right information available to them within the Mobile BI environment.
Review the Need for User Training – Even when your users have access to most intuitive solutions, you may wish to have a simple training session to be sure that all users understand a) what is expected of them, b) how to use the solution most effectively and c) how to get help if they have questions or issues.
Reports and Visualization – Be sure that the mobile business intelligence solution you choose supports a seamless user experience, and allows users to easily see dashboards, reports etc. so that they can incorporate data and reporting into their staff reports, their meetings, and their recommendations to management without expensive, time-consuming report customization or custom visualization designs.
User and Data Volume – Be sure that you plan for expansion of the mobile BI solution. As you add departments, divisions, user groups and additional data sources, you will want to ensure that your devices, network, and mobile BI solution can support the additional load, and still perform well.
The Data-Driven Organization – It is all well and good to encourage your users to work with data, to analyze information and use that information to present ideas and solutions to management, but if the executive team or the middle managers do not accept and reward the use of data in decision-making, the mobile BI solution will be just another toy. Staff assessments and career evaluations should support fact-based decision making and discourage guesswork and opinion as a means to drawing conclusions. Team members and managers should solicit and encourage the use of data during staff meetings and to support reports and decisions.
‘Assess existing workflow and business processes and ensure that users can incorporate mobile business intelligence within team tasks and activities, that IT can support the environment and that managers can make the best use of the data presented by the team.’
In this article, we have discussed the importance of successful integration of Mobile BI into business practices.
Mobile BI Can Benefit Your Business in Numerous Ways
Gartner defines the field of analytics and business intelligence technology as, ‘an umbrella term that includes the applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to and analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance.’
In order to understand the evolution and importance of Mobile Business Intelligence, we must go beyond the technically specific definition, to talk about the concepts and the purpose of Mobile Business Intelligence Solutions, and how mobile business intelligence tools can help your business become more productive and support success.
‘Providing the right Mobile BI tools to business users, takes the guesswork and frustration out of data analytics and ensures user adoption and improved data literacy.’
While many businesses today have recognized the value of self-serve analytics, they may a) not yet have implemented augmented analytics within the organization, b) have implemented business intelligence (BI) and analytics within the walls of the office environment, or c) be planning to expand self-service analytics to include mobile business intelligence mobile apps that will provide access for business users working in any environment.
Here we will discuss the benefits of self service analytics as they relate to the Mobile Business Intelligence environment. Here are just some of the benefits of mobile business intelligence:
Accessibility – When business users have access to real-time data, and insights into results, challenges and opportunities, they can mitigate risk, adapt to change and answer questions from customers, team members, managers and others. Desktop and enterprise BI tools require users to be in the office, which limits access to tools and information for remote users or those who are often on the road, working at home or visiting customers.
Adaptability – If the recent global pandemic taught businesses anything, it highlighted the need to adapt to change, and to establish and sustain tools, business processes and an environment that can support users and the business no matter the situation. The evolution of Mobile BI tools has allowed businesses and their team members to work from anywhere, to remain connected with access to valuable data insights and to keep the business moving with timely approvals, decisions and completion of tasks and activities.
Productivity – If there is one thing business users and their managers hate more than anything, it is the inability to complete tasks or the fear that a task will be completed without all the required information. Team members who are out of touch can hold up the completion of a task or make the wrong decision, because they do not have access to the right information and/or they lack the tools to share information with other users.
Collaboration – When a business user is working in a silo, or when business users do not all have access to the same information, they cannot collaborate. Creative, innovative solutions and insightful decisions only happen when a business team, management team or other department, entity or group has access to tools that allow them to share, report, create reports, and present information in a way that enables collaboration.
Data Democratization – The trend toward Citizen Data Scientists has gained in popularity. As business users transition from isolated team members into Citizen Data Scientists, they need access to sophisticated BI tools that offer clear, concise results in an easy-to-use interface, with features that enable team members to quickly gather and analyze data and share that data with the team. The days of complex BI tools managed by IT teams and Data Scientists are over! While Data Scientists work with crucial data to provide strategic direction, business users with access to self-serve BI tools can perform day-to-day analytics and find the information that will help them complete tasks and make better decisions.
Data Literacy – Today’s businesses must do more with less. That means that every resource, every skill, and every piece of knowledge must be leveraged to produce results. When business users gain literacy in data analytics, they can combine career knowledge, industry skills and business experience with data insights to produce better results. Providing the right Mobile BI tools to business users, takes the guesswork and frustration out of data analytics and ensures user adoption and improved data literacy
Time to Market – Your business must quickly adapt to change, understand competitive initiatives, shifting customer buying behavior, supply and demand challenges and more. With the right mobile business intelligence tools, users can discover the hidden nuggets of information that will help the business move forward quickly. They can answer prospective customer questions to close an order, and explore product bundling opportunities, and new product possibilities, or analyze and suggest changes to supply chain flow or production to ensure swift, reliable time to market.
Fact-Based Decision-Making – Mobile Business Intelligence solutions provide dashboards, reporting, analytical tools and other features on-the-go, so users can explore data, drill-down to find the root cause of a problem, perform searches using natural language processing (NLP) search analytics, visualize data, share data and make confident, data-driven decisions from any location.
‘When business users have access to real-time data, and insights into results, challenges and opportunities, they can mitigate risk, adapt to change and answer questions from customers, team members, managers and others.’
Why Should My Business Adopt Embedded BI and Analytics?
There are many reasons to consider adding embedded BI to your enterprise technology landscape. When you are making a critical business decision, one of the factors you probably include is how your competitors and other businesses are addressing the problems you are trying to solve. When making a decision about Embedded BI consider these survey results. Businesses that are currently using embedded BI within their enterprise, report the following:
The Client is a global business governed by a foundation whose mission is to have a meaningful social impact, both for patients and for a sustainable world. With its unique governance model, the Client business can fully serve its vocation with a long-term vision and fulfil its commitment to therapeutic progress and to serving patient needs. The company has grown exponentially, first across France and then throughout the world, driven by the transformation of the business.
Give Business Users Mobile BI to Extend the Office and Improve Responsiveness!
Change is ever-present, and no more so than in the past three or four years. As COVID has changed the way people work, and the location in which they do their work, the need for mobile BI Tools has grown exponentially. Neither the organization, nor the business users can afford to delay the use of business intelligence tools until they are in the office. Every business must do more with less.
‘Mobile BI should provide data analytics access for all business users and, above all, provide flexible, agile solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data and report and communicate with clarity.’
Mobile BI tools can provide support for team members as they travel, as they work from home, and as they collaborate with other team members from a client office, an airport, a train station, or a supplier location.
According to recent studies, the single most important benefit of Mobile Business Intelligence is enhanced data visibility. Another way to look at it is to consider the lost opportunities and the many missteps the organization will experience if it cannot make sense of its data in real time and with a comprehensive view into the data it captures across the enterprise.
Don’t try to dictate the type of device, the size of the screen or the resolution. Be sure you choose a mobile BI solution that will satisfy all manner of devices. Choose a user interface (UI) that is responsive and adaptive – one that provides self-serve tools without redesign or restructuring of dashboards for specific devices or screens. You can enhance total cost of ownership (TCO) and improve return on investment (ROI) with tools that are flexible and can be easily used in any environment.
Empower your users with integrated business intelligence tools that provide access to data in an interactive, personalized view and enable data sharing, identification of trends and patterns and user empowerment and accountability. Out-of-the-box mobile BI tools should support your users with tools that make it easier to understand data analytics and use data for reporting, presentation and collaboration with personalized dashboards and reporting and flexible graphs and charts.
‘Be sure you choose a mobile BI solution that will satisfy all manner of devices.’
The right mobile business intelligence solution should allow your users to get started right away without extensive training and at a reasonable cost. It should enable integration of data across disparate data sources so users have access to all the data they need to get a complete and comprehensive picture of business results, the root cause of problems and the opportunities that will provide unique competitive advantage to the organization.
Comprehensive BI Tools and Mobile BI should provide data analytics access for all business users and, above all, provide flexible, agile solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data and report and communicate with clarity. Simple, Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals. Let us help you achieve your vision and improve productivity and insight across the organization.
4 Things to Know to Prepare for BI Tools and Data Democratization!
The days of data silos and exclusive data access are over. Data Scientists and business analysts are still an important component of the business and IT teams are still crucial to the success and stability of the organization BUT if you are thinking that these roles are still responsible for day-to-day analytics and delivering every bit of data analysis to the enterprise, your business strategy needs an upgrade!
Going Beyond the Numbers with SmartenApps for Tally!
The Tally® ERP Solution and its latest TallyPrime offering are popular accounting and finance related suite of modules that provides support for invoicing and accounting, inventory management, reports, credit and cash flow management, banking, cost control and analysis, payroll management and other finance-related activities.
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