When business intelligence vendors talk about democratizing data discovery, they can have very different interpretations about ‘democracy’. If a business intends to provide self-serve BI tools to its employees for daily use and data discovery, it must provide true data democratization. The business user cannot be limited to viewing static dashboards developed by dashboard developers with only the most basic drill down and filtering capabilities. Business users must be empowered by true data democratization and self-serve BI tools, which, in many cases, is the original intent of a BI solution implementation. Sadly, many businesses never achieve their original goals, but rather end up with ‘packaged dashboards’, because they are hamstrung by desktop-based data discovery BI tools that require design control and intervention by dashboard developers and limit business users to packaged views and tasks.
