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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.’
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.
The Client is the largest global manufacturer of Air Coolers. The Client is an India-based Multi-National Company with a presence in over sixty (60) countries. As the market leader, this enterprise enjoys a prime position in the residential, industrial and commercial market segments and its brand is considered synonymous with cooling products in the global market. The Client is a market disrupter in what is a diverse and poorly organized sector and it has set the market benchmark with 201 trademarks, 64 registered designs, 15 copyrights and 48 patents, thereby setting the gold standard for air cooling in the global market.
Enterprise Agility and Adaptability Are Crucial. The Right BI Tools Can Help!
Gartner research states that, ‘90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention information as a critical enterprise asset and analytics as an essential competency.’
Whether yours is a small or a large business, your success today depends upon your agility and adaptability and those characteristics also apply to your data and your information.
If you are to build a flexible business environment, you must have tools and solutions that allow you to monitor and manage data and information and use that data to make fact-based decisions.
‘Comprehensive BI Tools 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.’
When considering a business intelligence (BI) solution, choosing a self-serve tool serves two purposes:
Support for the Organization and Users
A business can provide software and tools for users, but if those tools are not user-friendly, or if team members do not perceive their value, they will not adopt the solution into their business processes. In order to ensure that the organization can expect a good return on investment (ROI) and a low total cost of ownership (TCO), the enterprise must select a BI tool that is useful to the team and can easily be applied to satisfy the needs of their role and their responsibilities. The tools must also provide self-serve tools that offer comprehensive predictive analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs), flexible reporting, self-serve data preparation, deep dive analytics, mobile BI and social BI. This foundation will allow business users to improve data literacy and perform analytics with confidence, thereby improving fact-based decision-making.
Flexibility and Agility
When the organization selects business intelligence tools that are flexible, users can leverage personalized dashboards and customize their use to serve the needs of their role, their team and their business unit. The ability to adapt quickly by finding the root cause of a problem, spotting a trend and addressing that trend or identifying an opportunity to improve competitive advantage can provide an edge in the market and allow the organization to move quickly. Users can collaborate and share data to make decisions and recommendations and suggestions are clearly supported by data, so there is no hesitation or delay.
‘If you are to build a flexible business environment, you must have tools and solutions that allow you to monitor and manage data and information and use that data to make fact-based decisions.’
Comprehensive BI Tools 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.
Select the Right BI Tools and Succeed with Data Democratization!
Do you know what Data Democratization is? It’s simple, really. Data Democratization is the purposeful approach to cascading and integrating data into the daily workflow of business users to provide access to crucial information and the tools to analyze and understand that data and use it to make confident decisions. Instead of holding data in silos that are only accessible to IT, business analysts, data scientists and management, the enterprise recognizes the value of providing team members with the right information to do their job and contribute to the bottom line.
‘To succeed in data democratization, you need BI tools that provide data analytics access for all business users.’
Gartner predicts that, ‘75% of organizations will…deploy…multiple data hubs to drive mission-critical data and analytics sharing and governance.’ The key here is the ‘analytics sharing’ piece of the statement!
In order to fulfill the promise of this approach, your enterprise must employ business intelligence solutions that are easy-to-use and designed for business users, without advanced technical skills or advanced analytical skills. These tools allow your team members to engage in analytics and enjoy data democratization without the frustration of leveraging solutions designed for data scientists or IT staff.
Here are a few considerations to give you an idea of the kinds of things you will need to support your data democratization initiative. These factors are crucial to success, as they ensure that your users can and will adopt the BI tools you select to enjoy the new data access you have given them. Without these, you run the risk of spending the time and money to provide access and achieving poor return on investment (ROI) because of poor user adoption.
Embedded BI – By embedding business intelligence into the enterprise apps your users love, you can encourage data democratization and analytics in a single sign-on environment. Users do not have to sign in to multiple systems or move data around. They can start with the data within the ERP, HR, Finance or other system and perform analysis from within that system. Make it as easy as you can, and users will be happy!
Mobile BI – Don’t make your users sit at their desk in an office to use the BI tools. Make these tools accessible from the office and on the road, at home and in a client location or hotel. If you want your users to see the value in data democratization and you want to achieve your goals for this initiative, you must give your users the tools they need WHEN THEY NEED those tools.
Business Intelligence with Seamless User Access and Security – Data democratization does NOT mean throwing caution to the wind. Data must still be secured and accessible to users for the things they need to see, but not for the things they are not eligible to see and not in an environment where data security and privacy are at risk. To democratize your data, you must also ensure data governance, security and access standards and requirements are met.
Natural Language Processing – Make the augmented analytics and BI tools intuitive. Democratized data is no good if the users need an advanced degree to access the data. Natural Language Processing (NLP) allows your users to access data in a familiar way, with a Google-type search interface where they can ask questions using regular language and receive answers in a way that is easy to understand. If they can search, query and find information easily, they are more likely to a) use the system and b) understand the information they produce and make the right decisions.
Tools Designed Specifically for Business Users – The solution you select should be designed for business users, not for data scientists, business analysts, IT or statisticians. While you want the data democratization initiative to expand the skills and knowledge of your team, you do not want them to need advanced skills or training. Select a system that can be adopted and used within minutes – not months. Users want sophisticated functionality in an easy-to-use environment. That is important!
‘If you want your data democratization initiative to succeed, select tools that allow your team members to engage in analytics without the frustration of leveraging solutions designed for data scientists or IT staff.’
There are other considerations but, if you address the ones we have highlighted in this article, you will be well on your way to achieving your data democratization goals and ensuring that your users adopt the solution you select.
BI Tools should provide data analytics access for all business users. 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.
Why It’s Important to Include Cross-Tab Deep Dive in Self-Serve BI Tools!
When a business decides to implement a self-serve business intelligence (BI solution, it must ensure that the tools really are ‘self-serve’ and that they provide the flexibility and agility to give power users the ability to create and analyze, and business users with average technology skills the ability to quickly and easily understand the augmented analytics tools they now have access to, and to use those tools to the benefits of the team and the organization.
The Mobile BI Market is Growing! Make Sure You Select the Right Solution
In today’s mobile society, no enterprise can afford to overlook the importance of mobile access for business applications. Your team may be working remotely, or out of the office meeting with clients or a sales team. Whatever the case, mobile access to apps is crucial to productivity and collaboration. Business Intelligence solutions are no exception!
‘If the mobile BI solution is not flexible and seamless so that it operates on all devices; if it does not provide all features and functionality in a mobile environment, business users will be frustrated.’
According to recent research, the global mobile analytics market is projected to reach $28 million USD within the next decade. The reasons for that growth include an expanded interest in data democratization and the use of analytics among team members throughout the business organization, as well as a need for mobile access to optimize resources and ensure productivity.
The choice of solution is key to success and any mobile BI solution the business considers must support both Android and iOS, and operate in a ‘design once, use anywhere’ approach that accommodates desktops, tablets, and smart phones with an intelligent, adaptive user interface (UI) that supports any screen resolution and any size screen with seamless navigation and performance.
Anytime, Anywhere – Team members are more tech savvy today and they will not accept or adopt solutions that are restrictive or cumbersome. A mobile business intelligence solution must provide support for a fast-paced work environment and support users in the office and on the road.
Designed to Support Growth and Change – The mobile BI solution must support growth and be flexible to expand user volume, multiple locations and changes in business processes, reporting needs, etc.
Integrated Data Access – The mobile BI solution must be easy to use and operate out-of-the-box without customization to enable access to data for analytics, working across disparate data sources to serve seamless, clear information on mobile devices.
Comprehensive Features – Features should include the ability to personalize dashboards, report features including graphs and charts and key performance indicators (KPIs). Solutions that restrict access to all features on mobile devices will not serve your business users well.
‘The choice of a mobile BI solution is key to success. It must support both Android and iOS, and operate in a ‘design once, use anywhere’ approach that accommodates desktops, tablets, and smart phones with an intelligent, adaptive user interface (UI).’
It is important to understand that simply having mobile access is not enough. If the mobile BI solution is not flexible and seamless so that it operates on all devices; if it does not provide all features and functionality in a mobile environment, business users will be frustrated and are not likely to adopt and use the solution on a daily basis which will negatively impact return on investment (ROI).
Mobile BI and Business Intelligence solutions should include tools and techniques that make it easier to achieve data literacy and provide data analytics access to all business users. Simple, self-serve BI tools can provide your business with the foundation to achieve your goals with features and tools like Social BI, Embedded BI, etc. Let us help you achieve your vision and improve productivity and insight across the organization.
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