Combine Traditional and Modern BI for the Best Results!

Give Your Team Traditional and Modern BI in One Solution

Business Intelligence (BI) solutions have been around for some time. The traditional BI tools were designed to be used by the IT team, business analysts and data scientists and utilized sophisticated features which required specialized knowledge and skills possessed only by the technical and analytical community. In this environment, business users were consumers of content, and while they could access information from dashboards, reports and KPIs, they had very limited access to date and they could not interact with that data. Where users had access to data, BI objects, reports and dashboards were developed, provisioned and presented to them by the IT team, so the business user had no control over what they could see or the format of the data.

‘In the past, business users were restricted to analytical content provided by IT staff and Data Scientists with limited interaction and access to data’

Gartner predicted that ‘…smart/augmented, nonrelational-, search- and visual-based data discovery capabilities will converge into a single set of next generation data discovery capabilities as components of modern BI and analytics platforms.’

When You Combine Traditional and Modern BI Tools, You Give Your Team Comprehensive Support

In line with Gartner predictions, the new world of Augmented Analytics and Modern BI solutions enables end-users and team members to access and use business intelligence (BI) to combine their industry and functional knowledge with clear, concise data. These new solutions are focused on business users, and on their empowerment, placing the power of true insight into the hands of business users and transitioning business users into Citizen Data Scientists. These solutions provide more value to the organization, improving technology Return on Investment (ROI), Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increasing efficiency with fact-based decisions. Modern BI and Augmented Analytics offers data integration and sophisticated analytical models and techniques in an easy-to-use interface that provides auto-suggestions and recommendations to speed the analytical process and ensure that users get what they need. It also provides report formats, publishing tools, alerts and analysis that can be shared by team members to encourage user adoption and collaboration.

As the needs of the average user evolve, most businesses find that a combination of traditional BI tools and Modern BI tools will best meet the needs of the team and ensure that every team member has the tools they need to get the job done.

Here are the primary features and functionality your business will need to capture Traditional Business Intelligence components and provide comprehensive coverage for your team. These solutions allow the IT staff to provide dashboards and reports for business user consumption and review:

  • Personalized Dashboards – Users with average technical skills can design personalized dashboards in minutes without programming knowledge.
  • Multidimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – The team can define KPIs using an intuitive expression engine and KPI software to set polarity, frequency and threshold levels.
  • Social Business Intelligence – Imagine an environment where business users can access a business intelligence and analysis portal and see popular data to rate, share and comment.
  • What-If Analysis – Enables business users to determine how a prospective change to a product, service, resource allocation, budget, schedule, pricing, raw material cost, labor cost, or other factors might affect the business bottom line.
  • Graphical Analysis – Business users can leverage stunning visualizations, alerts for exceptions and trends, and intuitive, mobile BI dashboards with true deep dive capabilities!
  • Mobile Business Intelligence – Business intelligence solutions your business users can enjoy with high-performance BI tools that will work on any size or type of device.
  • GeoMap Support – Users can leverage geo maps, analyze data for any location, and define geographic areas with support for drill down, spot lighter and other features.
  • Exceptions and Personalized Alerts – With exception reporting users can define thresholds, monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and metrics, and even receive alerts when exceptions occur with the ability to set, modify and delete alerts based on specific thresholds.
  • R Integration – Integrates seamlessly with R (the popular open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing), so users can integrate any R script with simple input and output configuration.
  • Print Reports – The IT team can leverage a simple, basic programming or scripting environment to define format templates and produce reports for delivery by email.
  • Web-Based BI Reports – Business intelligence reporting software enables users to point-and-click and drag-and-drop to create a report summarizing performance metrics, or operational data, without programming or database or SQL skills.

Modern BI and Advanced Analytics – Augmented Analytics enables the transition from business user to Citizen Data Scientist and supports data democratization and data literacy, allowing Data Scientists to focus on strategy and business user access to analytics to perform day-to-day analytics.

  • Assisted Predictive Modeling – Predictive analytics for business users provides predictive modeling capability assisted by auto-recommendations and auto-suggestions to simplify use and optimize outcomes, allowing business users to predict outcomes without the expertise of a data scientist.
  • Auto Insights – The Auto Insights Smarten toolset allows business users to simply select the dataset to be analyzed and let the system interpret the dataset, select important columns of data, analyze its type and variety and other parameters and use intelligent machine learning to automatically apply the best algorithm and analytical technique and provide data insights.
  • Key Influencer Analytics – Focus on what matters and find the most relevant influencers for your target KPIs. Business users often find it difficult to identify the right targets and to understand relationships and factors that influence results.
  • Anomaly Analysis – Reveal trends, anomalies and answers, map targets, focus on influencers that matter and adapt to succeed.
  • Smart Data Visualization – Smart data visualization allows business users to view and analyze data to identify a problem and clarify a root cause and to make confident decisions.
  • Self-Serve Data Preparation – Smart data discovery tools and augmented data preparation features allow business users with average skills to perform data preparation and transform, shape, reduce, combine, explore, clean, sample and aggregate data, without the need for SQL skills, ETL or other programming language.

‘As the needs of the average user evolve, most businesses find that a combination of traditional BI tools and Modern BI tools will best meet the needs of the team and ensure that every team member has the tools they need to get the job done.’

There are other many other features and components available to support users, IT, business analysts and data scientists in the traditional and modern analytics environment.

To find out more about Business Intelligence (BI) Solutions And ReportingContact Us. Discover the power of Augmented Analytics and see how your team can benefit from fact-based decisions, and cost-effective analytics and achieve a market advantage.

Choose the Right Mobile BI Solution for Your Business!

What Do I Need to Know Before I Choose a Mobile Business Intelligence (BI) Solution for My Business?

What makes a great Mobile Business Intelligence (BI) solution? There are many factors to consider and, if you do not choose wisely, you risk a) spending a lot of money and getting very little in return, b) working with incorrect, old or incomplete data, c) having to upgrade and spend even more money, d) disappointing your team and falling short of objectives, e) missing your Citizen Data Scientist initiative goals.

Use Smart Data Visualization to Improve Decisions!

Smart Data Visualization and Personalized Dashboards Improve Data Insight and Team Collaboration!

Augmented Analytics was designed to remove the barriers erected by the traditional business intelligence and analytics solutions. In order to achieve data democratization and improve data literacy among team members within an enterprise, the organization must provide simple, easy-to-understand solutions that display analytical results in a way that is meaningful and intuitive.

Mobile BI Improves Productivity and Results!

Add Mobile BI for Your Team and Improve Access, Analytics and Business Decisions!

Recent surveys reveal that the mobile BI market is growing by leaps and bounds. Of those surveyed, over 35% of companies said that mobile BI is in use among their business users. While some businesses have yet to adopt BI tools or augmented analytics for their business users, many have done so, and are now in the process of adding mobile BI to the set of tools available to users. There is no doubt that the COVID pandemic affected this strategy, since many businesses are now embracing a full-time or a hybrid remote work environment that requires team members to have access to tools from wherever they are working.

Understanding BI Tools in Today’s Market

How Do We Define Business Intelligence Today?

Business Intelligence (BI) is the lifeblood of an organization. Without business intelligence, the enterprise does not have an objective understanding of what works, what does not work, and how, when and where to make changes to adapt to the market, its customers and its competition.

You may be interested to know that TechJury reports seven out of ten businesses rate data discovery as very important, and that the top three business intelligence trends are data visualization, data quality management and self-service business intelligence.

As the Business Intelligence solution market evolves, it may be difficult for an organization to know when to invest in these tools, and which tools are best for enterprise and user needs.

Give Your Users Mobile BI. They Will Love You!

Why Doesn’t Your Business Provide Mobile BI Access For Your Users?

You would think that businesses would understand the value of Mobile BI! After all, we are a mobile society. Today’s consumers and business users expect to have access to all of their tools, apps, software and websites on their mobile devices, and no matter what kind of device they have – iPad, tablet, Android smart phone, iPhone etc., they expect to have seamless performance. So, is it any wonder that businesses are facing the question of analytics on the go?

Gartner has predicted that, ‘overall analytics adoption will increase from 35% to 50%, driven by vertical and domain-specific augmented analytics solutions.’

‘Mobile BI can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.’

If your business users and Citizen Data Scientists have access to robust augmented analytics and traditional and modern BI within the walls of your enterprise, why don’t they access to these all-important tools when they are working remotely, in a client office, at an airport, on the road or working with a supplier or a partner? Consider the increased productivity and the improved workflow your team can achieve if you add Mobile BI. If you have invested in an analytics solution and you want to achieve the best return on investment (ROI) and the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO), you need to expand user access to a mobile environment.

If You Don’t Provide Mobile BI for Your Users, Why Not?

With the right Mobile BI solution your users can enjoy many benefits. When you consider a Mobile BI and augmented analytics solution, be sure your solution provides:

  • A native app, with seamless user interface for a great user experience (Ux) – compatible with iOS and Android
  • An extended office environment for swift analysis and decisions from anywhere
  • Encourages user adoption and provides support for BI investments and data democratization
  • Access rights are defined on the server so security and privacy is ensured at all levels
  • Can be hosted anywhere within IT infrastructure –on premises, public or private cloud
  • Business Users have access to dashboards, reports, Clickless Analytics – Google-type Natural Language Processing (NLP) Search functionality
  • Start-up is easy, within a few minutes and support is readily available

‘Consider the increased productivity and the improved workflow your team can achieve if you add Mobile BI.’

Choose a  Business Intelligence reporting solution that promotes data literacy and provides BI tools your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Mobile BI can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : If You Don’t Provide Mobile BI for Your Users, Why Not?

Case Study : Smarten Augmented Analytics Case Study- Pharmaceutical, Clinical Research and Innovation Company

Smarten Augmented Analytics Case Study- Pharmaceutical, Clinical Research and Innovation Company

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.

Mobile BI Tools for Citizen Data Scientists!

Mobile BI Tools Support Citizen Data Scientists and All Team Members With Access to Critical Data!

When a business takes on a Citizen Data Scientist initiative, it must provide the tools and techniques the business user will need to support the new role. Augmented Analytics is key – with features and tools that make it easy to integrate, find, analyze and share data across the enterprise.

Gartner has predicted that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’

If your organization is doing it right, the Citizen Data Scientist initiative will incorporate support to change the culture, to update the employee evaluation process to encourage the use of analytics and fact-based decision-making, and other factors that influence user adoption and enable the business to move forward with a team alignment.

But one thing many businesses fail to consider is the need for these tools outside the walls of the office environment. If the global pandemic taught us anything is that many employees were forced to work at home or in settings outside the typical office facility. Today, many companies have embraced this concept on a long-term basis, allowing their employees to work from home, or in remote group locations. But even if your business is situated in one more office buildings or store fronts, the chances are good that your team members spend a certain amount of time working outside the office, after hours, on weekends, etc.

‘Mobile BI tools provide the support for your Citizen Data Scientists, data scientists, business analysts, team members, executives, and managers so that every business user can access and analyze data, share, and collaborate.’

Teams today are asked to do more with less and, as work hours expand, and the expectations of businesses change, the team must adapt. Managers, executives, IT teams and others find themselves in situations where they must check the status of a project, approve a purchase or resource acquisition, communicate with a team and assess the need to make changes – the list goes on and on!

Mobile BI Supports Citizen Data Scientists and Data Literacy

Mobile BI tools provide the support for your Citizen Data Scientists, data scientists, business analysts, team members, executives, and managers so that every business user can access and analyze data, share, and collaborate and make decisions on the fly, in a staff meeting, in an airport or hotel, or at home.

To ensure that you choose the right tools for your Citizen Data Scientists, look for a Mobile Business Intelligence solution that offers the following features and functionality:

  • Native app, with seamless user interface for a great user experience (Ux). Available for iOS and Android
  • Extends the office environment. Allows swift analysis and decisions from anywhere
  • Encourages user adoption and provides support for BI investments and data democratization
  • Access rights are defined on the server so security and privacy is ensured at all levels
  • Hosted anywhere within IT infrastructure – on premises, public or private cloud
  • Business Users have access to dashboards, reports, Clickless Analytics – Google-type Natural Language Processing (NLP) Search functionality
  • Start-up is easy, within a few minutes and support is readily available

‘One thing many businesses fail to consider is the need for BI tools outside the walls of the office environment.’

If you want to support your Citizen Data Scientists and every member of your business user team, explore Smarten Mobile Augmented Analytics And Mobile BI. Add powerful functionality and access for your business users with out-of-the-box Mobile BI and advanced analytics for every team member. For more information on Mobile BI and Augmented Analytics, read our article, ‘Understanding The Truth About Mobile BI.’

Original Post : Mobile BI Supports Citizen Data Scientists and Data Literacy!

Self-Serve KPIs Allow Teams to Manage and Adapt!

BI Tools with Self-Serve Multidimensional KPIs Enable Agility and Accuracy!

Gartner research reveals that, ‘data literacy will become an explicit and necessary driver of business value, demonstrated by its formal inclusion in over 80% of data and analytics strategies and change management programs.’ When  businesses adopt and embrace business intelligence and augmented analytics, the expectation is that the enterprise will benefit by improving data literacy as well as productivity.

But if your business wants to make the most out of BI tools and augmented analytics, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately. To understand the results and whether policies, processes and tasks are effective, your organization must establish metrics, and those metrics must also be clear.

‘Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.’

A solution that provides easy-to-use, multidimensional key performance indicators (KPIs) will allow your team to establish metrics that are unique to your needs and to your industry and market and help the enterprise understand how the business measures up in the competitive market, how well the products and services are faring with customers and whether workflow and business processes are having the desired effect.

Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics

Benefits of Self-Serve, Multidimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

  • When the organization gives business users the tools to establish and manage KPIs, it can become more productive. There is no waiting for the IT team or a data scientist to produce important reports, so the team can be agile and flexible.
  • Interactive KPIs provide tools to gather, analyze and measure with breakdown and dynamic frequency and slice and dice so users can focus on critical metrics and gain true insight into results. Users can leverage a powerful expression engine to set polarity, frequency and threshold levels in a browser-based interface and go beyond static monitoring to change frequencies, and dimension breakdowns and gain an understanding of performance and issues.
  • Users can establish and monitor KPIs at the individual, team, department, division, and company level and KPIs are integrated with other features to further analyze trends. Multidimensional KPIs gives business users the opportunity to monitor and manage results against goals and objectives and change processes, tasks, and activities as and when change is required.

‘When your business chooses a BI tool, it is important to choose the right solution; one that is easy to use and will provide clear results – results business users can leverage to make decisions and to plan accurately.’

If your business wishes to improve data literacy and productivity by implementing or upgrading a Business Intelligence or Augmented Analytics solution, it is imperative that you review the available modules, tools and features to ensure that the solution provides easy-to-use, sophisticated functionality that is suitable for your business users. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial to this feature set, as they provide critical metrics that enable the business to discover and manage results objectively and to adapt and change quickly and effectively.

Choose a  Business Intelligence Reporting Solution that include Multi-Dimensional Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose  flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : Multidimensional KPIs Provide Easy-to-Use, Objective Metrics!

Self-Serve Cross-Tab BI Tools Reveal Issues and Possibilities!

Self-Serve BI Tools with Cross-Tab Reporting Improve Clarity and Results!

If you are considering a Business Intelligence solution or BI tool, or if you wish to upgrade your business intelligence and reporting tools, look for a solution that has self-serve cross tabulation, or cross-tab reporting. Cross-Tab reporting reveals the relationship between two factors or targets. This analytical tool can be used for side-by-side comparisons and to compare results for one or more data points, variables, or targets.

Did you know that, by some estimates, data-driven businesses are nearly 25% more likely to acquire customers? If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!

‘Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions.’

In this article, we discuss the value of self-serve BI tools with Cross-Tab capabilities and the benefits of this type of focus and insight.

Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data

Benefits of Self-Serve Cross Tabulation Reporting

Flexible for Business Use Cases

Cross-tab reporting allows for intuitive use by business users with average technical skills, and can be beneficial for all types of business functions and industries. In an educational setting, a university or school might use cross-tab reporting to analyze teacher or course evaluations, looking at the relationship between student satisfaction and the subject, the class time, class location and other factors. Businesses can analyze team and employee satisfaction and attrition by looking at job location, benefits, the results of exit interviews, available training, and support, etc. Cross-tab reporting is frequently used in market research to analyze the various factors that relate to product or service satisfaction, including product features and options, where and how the product is sold, the sales and marketing approach, etc. A retail store owner might use cross-tab data analysis to determine customer satisfaction by looking at demographics, the gender of the person buying the product, the price of the product in a particular region, etc.

Data Clarity

There are many ways to slice and dice data and many ways in which crucial information can hide inside that data. The self-serve cross-tab reporting approach allows business users to examine relationships among data points and factors, with more clarity and accuracy. This type of analysis provides more clarity and reveals results, interdependent relationships and factors that might otherwise be missed. Users can avoid confusion when working with data and analyze large datasets to reveal frequencies and percentages. With this information, the business can understand the ‘what if’ of the various factors and see how results would change if one factor or relationship is changed.

Fact-Based Decision-Making

Self-serve cross-tab reporting simplifies analytics and allows business users to spot trends and patterns and collaborate with other team members to adapt tasks and activities to resolve issues and/or capitalize on opportunities. Using cross tabulation reporting to understand the connection and relationship between two or more factors allows the business to make a decision, with confidence. Rather than guessing the reason for declining results, increased employee attrition or other problems, the enterprise can clearly see what factors (and the relationships among factors) are the cause of a problem and how to change those factors to get better results.

‘If you can give your team easy-to-use BI tools with self-serve cross-tab reporting, you can put the power of market and customer knowledge in their hands!’

Business Intelligence solutions with self-serve cross-tab reporting can provide an intuitive, clear method of data analysis for your business users by revealing relationships in a way that makes the results clear and helps the organization to make the best decisions. By giving your team members these tools, you can leverage domain and industry knowledge and combine data analytics in a day-to-day environment without the need for assistance from data scientists or the IT staff. Self-Serve Cross-Tab reporting produces clear results that are easy to understand and can be used in staff meetings and presentations to support recommendations and help the business become more agile.

Look for seamless Business Intelligence Reporting And Flexible Tools that include self-serve Cross-Tab reporting. Provide business intelligence that your IT team can easily implement and support, and a solution that business users will want to adopt. Choose  flexible, agile business intelligence solutions that can be used at all levels to collaborate, share data, and report and communicate with clarity. Self-Serve BI Tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your data democratization and user adoption goals.

Original Post : Cross-Tab Reporting Gives Business Users Insight Into Data!