Self-service analytics is the practice of enabling people to easily access and understand information in today’s data-driven world. In ZenOptics’ ZenTalk #2, prominent data and analytics expert Dr. Claudia Imhoff explores the degrees of self-service analytics, offering meaningful information on its goals, difficulties, and the crucial role of governance.
Empowerment is the first step toward a self-service analytics journey. According to Dr. Imhoff, self-service analytics refers to “analytical environments that enable business users to become more self-reliant and less dependent on IT.” This offers people the ability to leverage data without being constrained by conventional technical complexity or the need to have an IT professional create the request report or dashboard.
Making analytical tools user-friendly is a primary goal and the cornerstone of self-service analytics. It entails putting less emphasis on intricate coding and programming and more on easy-to-use interfaces that let people point, click, and obtain insights with ease.
Dr. Imhoff stresses that self-service analytics, however, shouldn’t result in seclusion. Instead of having people operate in silos, the goal should be to produce analytics that are advantageous to the entire company. Being self-sufficient in analytics does not mean being exclusive; rather, it means opening up analytics to other team members and working toward a common understanding of information.
A crucial component of the self-service analytics equation is governance. Good governance ensures better decision-making and confidence by upholding standards and processes as well as guaranteeing the reliability of data. It answers queries about the origins of the analytics, their development process, and their dependability.
Accountability follows from good governance, which also keeps companies from having to start from scratch. It is the cohesive element that keeps self-service analytics from sprawling into a mess of analytics chaos.
Dr. Imhoff lists the following four main goals for self-service analytics:
Ease of Use: The analytics tools need to be user-friendly, eliminating the need for extensive coding or technical expertise. The aim is to expand the audience’s access to analytics.
Ease of Consumption: Analytics should be easy to understand. It is ineffective to have complexity just for the sake of complexity. Improved data literacy, interpretation, and more comprehensible data-driven insights should be the main goals of self-service analytics.
Fast Deployment and Easy Management: Self-service analytics solutions should be quick to deploy and manage. To minimize the duplication of effort, users should be able to find existing analytics assets with ease.
Accessibility: Ensuring that all analytics assets are secured and appropriately available to those who need them requires the creation of a centralized platform, such as a BI portal and an analytics catalog. With multiple BI tools and reporting applications in an organization, a BI portal provides a centralized location to access reports and dashboards, while the analytics catalog provides the means to easily search and discover the information that is needed and available.
Enhancing self-service analytics through the balance of empowerment and governance helps organizations realize the value of their data and analytics investments by creating an analytics environment where reports and dashboards are secured and easy to access, discover, and utilize. A balanced solution that blends governance with empowerment via user-friendly analytics tools is needed for success. ZenTalk 2 offers insightful information about these important facets of contemporary analytics.
Watch ZenTalk #2 to see the entire conversation about self-service analytics and governance. To continue learning about how analytics is changing, please watch ZenTalk #3.
The ability to quickly access and analyze information is required in today’s competitive business environment. Self-service business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools have completely transformed the way that businesses utilize data – often to great benefit. However, organizations now also have to deal with some growing challenges and issues introduced by it.
The ZenTalk with featured speaker Claudia Imhoff entitled, “What Have We Done? The Mounting Problems with Self-Service BI and Analytics Part 1 of 3,” explores the difficulties of self-service BI. We have summarized the significant takeaways in the form of four primary challenges organizations face.
One of the glaring issues organizations face is the inconsistency in data and the subsequent trust issues that arise. In many organizations, different stakeholders come to meetings armed with diverse sets of data and reports that often include conflicting data points. This inconsistency in data definitions and calculations within reports can breed skepticism and mistrust in analytics. ZenTalk speakers highlighted a real-world example where a financial services company incurred a staggering $40 million rounding error due to the use of incorrect analytics assets. Although this is a dramatic example, such mishaps underscore the need for standardization and data definition uniformity in the analytics process.
Another prevalent challenge in the realm of self-service BI is report sprawl. The ease with which modern BI tools allow users to create reports and dashboards has led to a proliferation of reports and dashboards. The issue arises when anyone, regardless of expertise or understanding of the inherent business rules in data source structure, can generate reports. The consequence? A lack of control over the quality and accuracy of these reports. Plus, other people in the organization do not know which reports or dashboards should be used for analyses and decision making.
While data governance is a priority in many organizations, the usage of data in the form of reports and dashboards requires analytics governance as a complement to data governance programs. This layer of governance ensures that the analytics assets are accurate, relevant, and in alignment with organizational goals. It’s not just about managing data; it’s about managing the entire analytics process. The absence of governance not only results in report proliferation but also contributes to unverified accuracy of reports.
Perhaps the most critical issue of self-service BI and analytics challenges are the direct impact on decision making. When analytics assets lack standardization and are riddled with inconsistencies, individuals within an organization risk making decisions based on inaccurate data. Further, with the proliferation of reports that may be similar in nature, a decision-maker may not know which report or dashboard contains the appropriate information for use. This lack of validation can lead to a fractured decision-making process. The mounting problems in self-service BI are not merely operational issues; they can significantly impact the strategic direction of organizations and, in some cases, the company’s bottom line.
The ZenTalk concludes by highlighting how critical it is to identify and resolve the issues surrounding self-service BI. Critical issues that require attention include data inconsistency, report sprawl, the necessity for analytics governance, and the possible detrimental effect on decision-making. To realize the value of data as an asset, organizations must resolve the challenges with self-service BI and analytics.
To listen to the full ZenTalk discussing these challenges, and to hear the follow-up segments on how organizations can tackle some of the issues, please click here.
In this webinar, we discuss what is an analytics catalog, and, more importantly, how it can transform your business. Learn more and watch a product demo
Tune in to this on-demand webinar to discover Brown-Forman’s journey in implementing ZenOptics’ Analytics Catalog as a one-stop-shop for reporting and analytics across their enterprise.
Analytics-driven insights set the stage for business success, and in order to drive value from analytics, people need to be able to discover information, access it, trust it, and ultimately use it for business decisions. Yet, too many analytics efforts focus exclusively on business analysts or power users, resulting in programs that only address the needs of merely 10% of your target community. By taking three simple actions, you can increase the usage and consumability of your analytics assets while reducing the risks and costs inherent in most programs. Discover how analytics visibility, automation, and governance supported by an analytics catalog will increase analytics value and reduce complexity across the ecosystem of tools and applications in use across your organization today.
This report from industry analyst firm Radiant Advisors explores the factors that are required for productive, efficient, and governed reporting and analytics.Eliminates time wasted searching for reports with intuitive employee experience
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ZenOptics, the analytics catalog industry pioneer, gives employees a personalized experience to simplify the discovery of analytics assets used across the enterprise. ZenOptics has seen rapid growth fuelled by businesses needing to utilize analytics investments as a competitive advantage.
Analytics consumers, anyone within an enterprise that needs access to an analytics asset such as a report, dashboard, key performance indicator (KPI), and even spreadsheets, word processing, and presentation documents, are often overwhelmed by the volume and diversity of analytics tools and assets. When employees access an asset, there is little confidence in ungoverned insights and if the information is correct and up to date.
These challenges present significant barriers causing analytics investments to underperform and go underutilized. In fact, just over 14% of employees use the Business Intelligence (BI) software the organization has invested in [BARC, 2022], creating financial pressures, poor reporting, and a challenging work environment. The average company uses more than 360 applications, and unless the employee experience is simplified, these issues will only worsen over time.
“Every part of an organization uses multiple tools and apps to collect and analyze important data, so this isn’t isolated to the finance or sales teams, said Saurbh Khera, Founder, and CEO, ZenOptics. “By using advanced integration and machine learning (ML) technologies, we’ve addressed these challenges by simplifying what is critical to this new analytics consumer, reducing the clutter they typically sort through. By presenting reports and dashboards in a consumable employee experience, report users significantly reduce the time spent searching for these assets.”
Businesses need more of their workers to use more of the analytics investments if they want to move quickly and adapt to changing conditions. ZenOptics helps organizations address several emerging challenges:
Drain on resources: Teams are constantly wrestling with tool complexity and access across most organizations, causing a severe drain on time and resources. The average knowledge worker spends about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30 percent of the workday, searching for information [IDC]. ZenOptics provides each employee with a personalized view of the assets they use most frequently.
Inaccurate reporting: 44% of users occasionally or frequently made a wrong decision because they did not have the information they needed. In addition, 43% of users reported occasionally or frequently overlooking important information because of too many applications or the volume of information [Gartner]. ZenOptics ensures that analytics assets are verified and accurate.
Lack of speed and agility: Every business function today needs access to analytics assets, so a centralized model doesn’t work. In that environment, for teams requesting access to internal data beyond their departmental remit, the response time could be measured in months in 53% of cases [McKinsey]. ZenOptics puts the right assets in the hands of the analytics consumer.
Distributed operations: Businesses are embracing a growing remote workforce and have highly distributed operations – geographically, location-operations centers, warehouses, stores and client locations. ZenOptics ensures the analytics consumer has the right level of access depending on their role, location, responsibilities and other factors.
These challenges are fuelling ZenOptics’ continued growth and momentum. The company grew 150% year-over-year in 2021 and nearly doubled the number of customers which include Brown-Forman, Janney Montgomery Scott, and Benjamin Moore.
ZenOptics has also been growing globally, with a 300 percent increase in customers across Europe. To better support this growth, ZenOptics recently announced the opening of a new European office in London.
“ZenOptics fills a major gap in the current analytics landscape as companies grapple with shifting from producing more and more to making better use of what they already have,” said Donald Farmer, Principal, TreeHive Strategy. “With ZenOptics, organizations can maximize the value of their analytics investments by increasing usage and improving consumability for a broader population of analytics consumers.”
ZenOptics, recognized in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Analytics, enables analytics producers and consumers to align around the business objective to better assess, optimize and scale the impact of analytics across the organization. By providing employees with a high-quality experience, they’re at least 1.5 times more likely to have high levels of work effectiveness, productivity, discretionary effort, and intent to stay at their current employer [Gartner].
In addition to providing a better employee experience, ZenOptics analytics workspace empowers leaders to compose and share analytic flows using fit-for-purpose tools, interlocked with policies for governance, quality, and compliance to better integrate into the business context.
ZenOptics helps organizations maximize the value of their analytics investments by increasing usage and improving consumability for a broader population of analytics consumers. ZenOptics’ analytics catalog provides a personalized experience to simplify the discovery of analytics assets generated within the entire ecosystem of tools and applications already in use at organizations today. An intuitive analytics workspace empowers consumers to compose and share analytics flows using fit-for-purpose tools interlocked with policies for governance, quality, and compliance to better integrate into the business context. Personalized dashboards enable analytics producers and consumers to mine intelligence from connections between teams and assets to align analytics work with business objectives and better assess, optimize, and scale the impact of analytics.
ZenOptics was recognized in Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Analytics.
For many people, their place of work has moved much closer. The hectic rush hour on crowded roads or on packed public transport has been replaced by a quick journey along the landing or down the garden to the home office. In due course, many will return to the previous way of working in central office locations, but it seems highly likely that the “New Normal” will be marked by more people than ever before working remotely – particularly since it has only accelerated an existing trend of enabling remote workers.
We all know that many advantages are proffered for home working, and indeed I am a great fan of doing so. Of course, there is a range of technology that helps with online meetings and other forms of office communication, but there is also a danger that matters that would have been covered in the informal interaction between colleagues in an office will be missed. We no longer have the coffee machine chats, the quick conversation with the colleague at the next desk, five minutes grabbed “on the fly” with the boss, and so forth. This impacts us all but it’s especially acute among younger and, thereby, less-experienced employees. Personally, I can vividly remember in my early career how I was rescued from several professional “faux pas” after a few wise words from a more senior colleague! Would I be so fortunate now?
I have spent most of my recent career in the analytics industry, so not surprisingly my thoughts have wandered to how this challenge might play out in that world.
Let’s imagine you are searching for a report. One obvious way of starting this process would be to see if anyone has produced anything like this before, and that may likely involve asking around your office. If you are working remotely, that informal collaboration is not so easy. In today’s data-centric world, business users were already faced with the challenge of finding reports and the necessity of trying to work out which, if any, were relevant to their needs. Now that challenge is compounded because everyone is working from different locations. Enterprise data and documents are scattered all over the virtual work ecosystem. Even once access is set up to the ecosystem from remote locations, this “virtual clutter” makes it even harder to determine who owns what data or report, particularly when business users are using different BI and analytics tools.
Report clutter kills productivity. The ability to search a catalogue of reports to identify the right reports for your needs – and reports that are similar that could provide additional insights – would save you time. If you can readily see the wheel online then you won’t need to reinvent it! And wouldn’t it be even better if the available reports were rated as to their suitability for particular purposes by appropriately qualified colleagues?
These are among the business challenges that ZenOptics can help solve, thereby dramatically improving your decision-making process – regardless of where you may be working.
Find out more about how ZenOptics makes finding the right reports at the right time easier, read our white paper “Report Management in the New Normal – A Guide for COOs.”
Many thanks to Peter McQuade, vice president of Alliances and Channels at ZenOptics, for authoring this blog.