There are many ways to access business information. A traditional approach is to log onto a business intelligence (BI) application, such as Tableau or Power BI, and navigate to the report that you need, search for one you hope exists, or create a new report altogether.
Most organizations have multiple BI applications that require individuals to log onto each of those applications separately in order to find and access the desired report, dashboard, or visualization.
A BI Portal serves as an application layer that simplifies access by providing a single interface to multiple BI applications and their corresponding content.
First-generation BI Portals, in many cases, were simply web pages with a series of links to BI content. Most were developed internally within organizations, if they decided to undertake such an endeavor. Search capabilities were limited to the report names and tags that were assigned to a report. Depending on how sophisticated the BI Portal is, the reports were either static web pages or they were rendered from within the connected BI application.
While first-generation BI Portals provided a centralized point of view for users, they were a maintenance nightmare for information technology departments since the links and tags had to be manually monitored and maintained.
Second-generation BI Portals evolved beyond a series of static reports and web links into an application layer that provided direct connectivity into the underlying BI applications. In many cases, the underlying user security of each of the BI applications was inherited into the BI Portal, thereby providing report-level security of the data.
To enhance user experience, a BI Portal is designed to centralize access to BI reports, dashboards, and visualizations. Through the BI Portal, users can find information from the corresponding connected BI applications.
For example, an organization may use Tableau for its operational reporting and Power BI for its financial reporting. Analysts who need to access operational and financial reporting must log onto Tableau and Power BI separately to obtain that information.
However, a BI Portal that is connected to both Tableau and Power BI allows the user to simply log onto the single interface and access both Power BI and Tableau content without having to log onto each of the underlying BI applications separately. With centralized access, users save time and are more productive.
Another benefit of a BI Portal is that users can search for and discover information quickly and easily without having to navigate across multiple systems. Users also want their tools to be intuitive so that they don’t need much training in order to utilize these resources effectively.
A good BI Portal allows users to access the information they need, in the way that makes sense to them. The portal should be easy to find what you need, and it should be easy for users to navigate through. This means that they don’t have to learn how to use separate tools for each type of content. Users can search for content by title or keyword, view any related items (such as related reports or dashboards), drill down on the visualizations in a report, filter the data behind a visualization, and more.
BI Portals are an important way to access business information in a user-friendly way. This allows everyone—from executives to managers to salespeople—to be able to easily find and use the information they need when they need it. BI Portals make it easy for anyone within an organization to get their hands on everything from sales data to customer metrics.
Based on my past experience and observations, BI teams (composed of individuals who implement BI applications and create and maintain the BI application and corresponding reports, dashboards, and visualizations) spend one-third to two-thirds of their time answering basic inquiries about BI application connectivity and the names/content of reports from business users.
With a BI Portal, connectivity is a simple pass-through of user access/security rights and a self-service environment that enables users to easily find and access the content they need.
The evolution of BI Portals continues. In recent years, the introduction of analytics hub technology has essentially taken second-generation BI Portals beyond BI applications to amplify value across the entire analytics ecosystem.
While the core of an analytics hub is a BI Portal, an analytics hub provides users access to reports, dashboards, and visualizations that are embedded within applications (such as Salesforce.com), documents located in the cloud or network drives (such as PDFs), spreadsheets, and other report types that are part of the modern technology stack.
In addition to BI Portal capabilities, analytics hubs incorporate analytics catalog, collaboration, automation, and governance components. Information about analytics hubs can be found here.
BI Portals are an important way to facilitate access and search capabilities for business information in a user-friendly way. They provide users with a single point of access for reports and dashboards, which can improve the productivity of your organization.
With BI Portals, users can interact with data and dashboards in ways that intuitively make sense to them. The future of BI Portals has evolved into analytics hubs that provide far greater information access, collaboration and automation.
Learn how organizations are using analytics hubs to drive more value from analytics.
In today’s business environment where established organizations seek digital transformations and newer organizations embrace a modern technology stack, one common and persistent goal holds true: the desire to utilize data in the most productive manner for the betterment of the organization.
Innovation in the area of digital data generation, collection, and processing is now well established and embraced by many data-driven organizations. However, the utilization and consumption of data, information, and analytics in the form of reports, dashboards, and visualizations is still undergoing an evolution.
Traditional business intelligence (BI) applications and BI Portals cannot address information formats which now include embedded analytics, augmented analytics, business applications, external documents, and data workspaces. They require a broader and more comprehensive approach to meeting the information needs of business users.
An analytics hub represents the evolution of BI Portals and ushers in a new era of analytics productivity.
The foundational components of an analytics hub are application layers that enhance and provide rich capabilities for business users to search, discover, interact, and analyze information that facilitate business decision-making. These foundational components are all critical to delivering a cohesive, intuitive analytics experience for users. [See Figure 1.]
At the core of an analytics hub is the BI Portal which establishes a single interface for users to access and interact with all their analytics assets—including reports, dashboards, spreadsheets, PDFs, and others—from one place regardless of the underlying tool or application. User productivity increases because they no longer need to separately log on to or be trained on each of the separate BI and reporting applications.
Layered on top of the BI Portal, an analytics catalog serves as the essential technology to create a glossary of existing content—along with appropriate metadata for an enhanced, contextual understanding of terms, metrics, and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The analytics catalog further provides users with curated, organized content and the capabilities of classifying, searching, discovering, and understanding the analytics metadata for standardization and consistency. As a result, users can discover the analytical assets that they have access to as well as those that they don’t have security permission. In those cases of non-access, the name and information about the analytic asset are displayed but not the content.
Adding to the capabilities of the analytics catalog, the next layer establishes analytics collaboration. Users benefit from communication tools, the ability to discover and connect with subject matter experts and report owners related to a certain topic of interest, and to connect and share resources directly with individuals and teams—all within the established governance and security parameters. With the example previously mentioned in the analytics catalog description, a request can be submitted for a non-access analytic asset by contacting the business owner who will determine the appropriateness of the request.
One of the unique and critical features of an analytics hub is analytics automation. Here, users are able to automate the assembly of analytic assets from the analytics catalog to support complex analyses and business processes. This further enhances the user experience, improves productivity, and supports analytics governance.
For example, a cash forecast analysis can be automated by assembling analytic assets for current cash balance, check register, accounts receivable aging, accounts payable aging, forecasted sales, and forecasted expenses. Having analytic assets grouped together in a meaningful manner, refreshed for a synchronized period, and shared with a team, establishes a standard analytical process for completing the desired analysis as well as simulates knowledge sharing.
The collection of the previously discussed components, combined with the ability to monitor usage and activities, provides the capabilities for analytics governance. In addition, BI application management can be performed based on user licenses, usage, and analytic assets that are measured and monitored. Value from analytics can be measured based on usage and feedback. With this layer, lifecycle management can be performed from concept to sunsetting of analytic assets.
As the innovator and recognized leader of analytics hub technology by Gartner Group, ZenOptics released its Intelligent Analytics Hub in 2019 and was declared a Gartner “Cool Vendor” for its innovative technology. Today, ZenOptics continues to pioneer innovative capabilities and features that render tremendous business value to users of its technology in the form of increased productivity, greater insights, and confident business decision-making.
ZenOptics has assembled a world-class team of experts in the field of data and analytics, backed by Silicon Valley and global investors, to execute their vision of providing software that enables data-driven organizations to succeed by utilizing trusted enterprise analytical assets. The result is a dedicated, customer-focused team that is passionate about driving analytics value.
Customers across industries worldwide have realized increased value from their analytics and digital transformation initiatives due to the power of an analytics hub to enable business end users. For example, beverages company Brown-Forman uses ZenOptics as a one-stop shop for all reporting needs, therefore establishing an easy-to-access single source of trusted analytics resources.
Global biotech enterprise Illumina amplified the power of its analytics competency center by creating a unified analytics hub to rationalize and simplify its reporting environment. Sysco Canada food services has streamlined its reporting processes for executive reporting, saving time and enhancing productivity for reporting teams and executives.
These are merely a few examples of common use cases organizations recognize to drive increased value from analytics assets. Learn more here to find out what an analytics hub can do for you.
I just finished reading another analyst survey sponsored by technology vendors discussing why organizations struggle to advance their analytics programs. The top priorities read like every other survey of the last couple of years: produce more “advanced” analytics, rollout more self-service analytics tools, and increase “data literacy” skills across the organization. Sounds great if you are looking to sell more software or services. But what about those of us that want to use the existing analytics assets to make better decisions in the context of our digital work?
(While I work for a vendor, I am writing as a frustrated 25-year marketing leader who just wants a simpler approach to using the wealth of analytics resources available to my team and me.)
Over the last ten years, myriad studies have been published that talked about how organizations need to invest in data and analytics as a cornerstone of digital transformation. The challenge is that most digital initiatives have come up short. In a recent Gartner webinar, they said that 72% of digital business transformations missed revenue expectations, and 67% missed profit expectations.
That didn’t stop the Business Intelligence (BI) market from growing to nearly $20 billion in revenue on the promise of self-service analytics (SSA). Why then are we still seeing surveys where only 16% of respondents say that rank-and-file employees have access to analyzed data, and only 15% say everyone in the organization has access?
If you are associated with analytics at your organization, whether as a producer, curator, or tool manager, this should give you pause. Technology providers and consultants have you so focused on producing more assets (reports, visualizations, dashboards – which are now often marketed as “advanced”) that everyone forgot about the other side of the equation: ensuring that what is produced is being consumed. For an analytics strategy to have the impact a company requires, it is time to stop listening to all the people trying to sell something. It is time to listen to the customer, the analytics consumer. In your organization, the analytics consumer is the campaign manager in marketing trying to improve the effectiveness of their investments, the logistics manager resolving supply chain bottlenecks, and the global finance team trying to close the quarter quicker to allow for more analysis – to name just a few.
One of our enlightened clients, Brown-Forman, recognized this issue when they weren’t getting the daily adoption they wanted after implementing Tableau. They went to the source and surveyed their internal customers. They discovered that: “Simply a lot of people didn’t know how to access information across all of our tools and platforms.” Less than 20% of their population were confident that they were aware of what current reporting was available and knew how to access it. Only 1 in 3 were satisfied with their experience of accessing business information. What was encouraging was that over 90% were open to change. So just pumping out more analytics wasn’t the answer.
So, what should organizations do to address these analytics challenges? Besides asking the customer directly (what Brown-Forman did), we see requirements fall into three broad buckets: (1) Access, (2) Awareness, and (3) Experience. We believe that together, focusing on improving these three areas for the analytics consumer can have a more significant impact than just SSA or a data literacy program.
In general, create a location (some call it a hub or portal) that can serve as the central clearinghouse for all the assets that an analytics consumer may need. This starting point includes assets produced by the main analytics team and insights captured in tools like Excel and PowerPoint. (Note: In 2021, Excel use grew by 30%).
Requirements also need to support the protection and governance programs of the organization. This means enforcing existing policies and tools but also offering a streamlined process whereby analytics consumers can request timely access to additional insights. SIDEBAR: Time is of the essence. For teams requesting access to internal data beyond their departmental remit, the response time could be measured in months in 53% of cases.
Making the analytics assets available to the respective teams is one thing. It is another if analytics consumers do not know these hubs exist or that specific assets that could improve their outcomes are added/updated. These new consumers are distributed geographically and/or by location (home, office, store, branch, operations center, warehouse, manufacturing, client location, etc.). Establishing an active awareness program, supported smart alerts, and nudge engines integrated into their existing work tools is critical for driving adoption and keeping the analytics community active. SIDEBAR: Making a wrong decision. 44% of users occasionally or frequently made a wrong decision because they did not have the information they needed.
It’s not just about delivering digitally or rolling out SSA tools to more people. Organizations must consider the analytics consumer persona more broadly. They are diverse (finance, sales, marketing, operations, customer support) and have a very different skill set (domain vs. analytical vs. technical) than the typical analyst. While data and analytics pundits push for data literacy programs to make up for some of the perceived skills gaps, the complexity of the tools and how they have been implemented may be exacerbating this problem.
To drive analytics consumption, a simple experience is paramount. It should include many elements of B2C thinking, including offering multiple ways to find the right item, whether by searching, browsing, or peer recommendations. It needs to be aesthetically pleasing to accelerate onboarding and a quick learning curve. Users should be able to provide feedback and pose questions to the producer of the report or to the broader community. Most importantly, it should allow the user to compose the analytics assets within the process context and facilitate collaboration across their extended team.
In general, your analytics program may be limited in its potential, not because of the BI tools or reports that are being provided. Rather, it is constrained by the lack of alignment with the analytics customer and how they consume the assets. Rather than making assumptions about what would be beneficial, why not just ask them what they need to be effective and stop listening to sales noise?
For over 20 years, I have immersed myself in the world of data and analytics. And during that time, data and analytics have changed. A lot. I’m sure many of you remember the days when reporting was tied to your ERP system. If you used IBM’s ERP, then naturally you used Cognos for reporting. Or if you used SAP, then you used Business Explorer or Business Objects.
But then self-service BI, analytics, and visualization tools began to emerge. And organizations shifted from a single tool reporting solution to a best-of-breed approach, where users and departments selected the tool best suited for their needs. Shadow IT emerged during this time, and their role was to enable and support these self-service tools.
As a result of the self-service evolution in BI and analytics, many organizations also embarked on a journey of business and data transformation. And they were all looking to solve the same challenges: How do I drive adoption of all these analytics tools? How can I help users find what they need quickly and trust it? And how do I ensure analytics doesn’t become an afterthought – for leadership and for end-users?
Simply put: how can I ensure that my organization is getting the most value out of our data?
Organizations made many attempts to solve these challenges. Some organizations built data warehouses, data pipelines, data lakes, data fabric, data meshes, and/or invested in data governance. And while these efforts tackled some of the core tenets of data management for data producers and consumers, the core challenge remained: are analytics reaching the consumers who need them most?
The short answer is NO. In fact, according to Gartner, most organizations focus their analytics efforts toward technologists, who make up only a small subset of the people with analytics needs in an organization. The research shows that 92% of the potential analytics consumers may be neglected when it comes to working with analytics tools and resources.
So how can organizations solve this challenge? How can they ensure that all users can find the analytics assets that they need to make informed decisions? How can you make sure that the data strategy is supported by an overarching information strategy?
This challenge certainly isn’t new. But how organizations solve this challenge needs to change. And that’s where ZenOptics comes in.
ZenOptics knows that in order for analytics consumers to make informed decisions, they need to know which report is right. That’s why we’ve designed our solutions with the analytics consumer in mind. By giving analytics consumers a simple way to determine which report is the right report, they can clear out the noise caused by numerous, similar versions of reports that pull data from disparate sources and systems. And they can gain visibility into where the report is coming from so that they can confidently choose the one they need for the task at hand. Let’s take a closer look.
ZenOptics provides a unified view of analytics assets that curates the information a user needs to accelerate decision-making. As a personalized “report catalog” delivered via a highly customizable dashboard, users can discover and access analytics content through favorites as well as within categories and workflows.
ZenOptics Dashboard Example
From reports and dashboards to Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs, users gain understanding through analytics metadata about these assets, allowing them to answer questions such as:
ZenOptics allows users to take discoverability to the next level through intelligence. Using keyword search capabilities, users can correlate assets through metadata, identifying traits such as the type of report (Finance vs. Sales), which system it came from (Salesforce vs. Cognos), whether the asset is certified or not, and how many users view/use the asset. Users can also discover other, related assets that exist in other systems or other parts of the organization – and if they don’t have access to the asset, they can initiate a process to request it, right from their search results.
ZenOptics Search Example
As analytics assets proliferate, another challenge facing users is redundancy. How can a user feel confident that the report they are using is the most accurate, most up-to-date version?
Because ZenOptics provides a unified view of assets regardless of the source system, users become aware of potential redundancies. Matching capabilities use algorithms to flag similar or duplicate reports based on metadata. Then, users can alert analytics producers to these potential duplicates so they can help determine which one is right or most recent. Analytics producers can then apply governance principles to certify the content at the time of curation.
This process allows business users to optimize their experience by choosing to work with only certified content (clearly identified with blue check marks), which gives them confidence that the asset they are using is right and appropriate for its intended purpose. This curated, personalized view is not only trustworthy, but also more efficient, helping users to quickly and confidently access the insights they need to drive better decision making.
Once users have a curated, unified view of relevant and appropriate assets for their work, then they can then focus on composability. By composing their own workflows, they can easily enable one-click access to the analytics assets that optimize their existing business processes. For example, finance users responsible for month-end close can compose a workflow that includes the reports, external links, internal and external apps, and database views needed throughout the month-end close process, regardless of the underlying tool in which the asset resides. By adding these analytics assets into a flow, they can easily and efficiently gather the data and insights needed to complete the process in a consistent, standardized, and efficient way.
Making use of analytics is not just about tech capabilities or processes; roles and people are key to the success of an analytics strategy. While many organizations rely on their business users and analytics producers to manage and maintain analytics assets, other organizations are finding that having an analytics business partner is key to their success. An analytics business partner understands both sides of the organization – business and technical. They help translate business needs into technical requirements and garner respect from both business and tech folks because of their ability to understand the technicalities and nuances on both sides. Because of this unique blend of skills and knowledge, they are able to work alongside analytics users to support them throughout the process – from identifying data elements through to decision making.
These analytics business partners are responsible for managing the platform, bridging the gap between business needs and increasing consumption. And they support business users as they curate content into categories and workflows within their trusted unified view.
You may find that individuals with these skills already exist within your organization. And if they do, I suggest formalizing their role. But if they don’t, consider hiring someone with a blend of functional and technical expertise to support your users.
ZenOptics recognizes the challenges that the proliferation of analytics assets has caused for organizations. Using advanced integration technologies along with machine learning and AI, ZenOptics creates an analytics catalog that brings cross-platform analytics assets together in a unified view that goes the last mile – closing the gap between insights and decisions. And when businesses adopt an analytics catalog that provides a single, unified view for enterprise analytics assets, they improve access to critical insights, increase assurance that the information is right, and accelerate decision making across the organization.
Ready to learn more? Request a demo.
Written by ZenOptics Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Heena Sood.
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.
Could you deliver even more value with the analytics assets you already have in place?
The answer for many organizations is “yes.” And a logical place to start is by enabling more people throughout your organization to make decisions based on data and analytics. It’s a relatively simple model: put more resources into the hands of people who are responsible for the majority of day-to-day decisions and your organization will be situated for amplified impact.
Yet research shows that BI and analytics typically focus heavily on tech folks. In fact, Gartner shows that most initiatives focus on dedicated technologists – ignoring up to 92% of the organization’s potential users.
Many organizations try to address this through self-service, but instituting a self-service program is not enough. These initiatives commonly open up the tools to more users – which is a great start, but extending the openness of a tool or platform does not guarantee increased use. Why? Because these tools are typically not designed for the casual user. Further, multiple tools are often required for a single purpose in order to understand the analytics and the underlying context. Organizations must consider what is necessary to not only allow these users to work with analytics, but to empower them.
In short, organizations need to see any person who has to make a business decision as a viable user of analyzed data – the analytics consumer. Only when they have a clear understanding of this new persona can they align the right resources to their needs. The result will be enabled, empowered people who are focused on business outcomes.
As a best practice, when considering how to best set someone up for success, it is important to look at things through their perspective and understand their motivations, challenges, and the way they work. Analytics consumers are not the same as data folks – they have different roles, different needs, and are focused on different business outcomes. As such, It’s important to understand the unique needs of this group. What roles are these people in? What reporting/analytics needs do they have? Who do they need to collaborate with? How quickly must they have information – and make decisions based on it?
Let’s consider some of the traits of these analytics consumers are:
Considering these traits, how do you empower this diverse set of people with requirements and skills unique to their particular business roles?
First, allow users to work with the tools that meet their needs. Different BI and analytics tools are suited for different purposes. Your finance department lives in Excel, while other people consider it a necessary evil and prefer to view and assess information visually, perhaps in Tableau. Some people prefer a dashboard overview, while others want to drill into the details and mine for finer grain insights. You can empower them by simplifying their experience and allowing them to work with what is most natural and/or appropriate for their needs.
Second, allow people to seek further understanding and context if they wish. Some people can’t – or don’t want to – take information at face value. Fundamentally, analytics consumers are a procurement person, a salesperson, or a marketing person first. They need to see the analytics organized in the context of what they are trying to do – whether it is quarter close, a new customer proposal, or generating a new campaign. Here is where they have to make decisions, and this is where analytics metadata and context come in for not only common, standardized understanding but to provide an additional level of confidence in the information. Further, if there’s a question about the report/asset, the analytics consumer should easily be able to identify who the business owner of that asset may be to reach out quickly for more detail.
Third, despite how independently people may work, they usually do not work in isolation. The analytics they discover and use will be valuable to others as well. It is important to facilitate collaboration, sharing, and easy communication surrounding each of these analytics assets – or groups of assets – to scale the impact and support the decision-making process.
Empowering people with resources is not just about technology. To truly meet the needs of your analytics consumers, you need to establish a user experience that facilitates the discovery, composition, and promotion of analytics assets in intuitive ways that align to support the way people work.
Simplify Discovery and Access of assets: Often organizations think that because an individual has permissions in a tool that he or she will have everything they need. Yet that is generally not the case. One of our customers conducted a survey of their users and found that less than 20% were confident in the available current reporting and how to access it. Just because someone has access does not mean they are able to quickly assess which underlying tool they should go to for the information they need, nor that they will be able to easily identify the appropriate analytic asset for their use. Organizations can benefit from providing a single place for trusted assets to be accessed – regardless of the underlying tool or platform – so analytics consumers can quickly find and open the report, dashboard, spreadsheet, or PDF they need to do their daily work.
Compose analytics flows: Many analytics consumers have certain recurring report-related business processes they follow. For instance, end-of-month reporting will include individual reports from different regions, divisions, etc. These consumers see the analytics in the context of the processes or flows – and these processes require multiple assets and multiple sources (tools). Creating cross-platform analytics workflows can allow these people to quickly launch the series of analytics assets they need to accomplish their work. Even if it is as simple as reports that are discussed in a weekly meeting, a workflow including all the reports – ordered in the sequence of discussion – can save time and energy. More importantly, it can ensure the team and stakeholders are all working from the same information.
Scale the impact of the analytics: Providing a simple, intuitive experience for analytics consumers, sets the stage for resources to be shared and consistently, appropriately used across teams and business units. People need to collaborate to support and substantiate their decisions. And when they need more information, they need to be able to easily search for more assets, dig into the context (the analytics metadata) of the report, and mine for further intelligence.
Ultimately, by enabling more diverse users with analytics, they will be better positioned to move your business forward. ZenOptics provides an intuitive user experience for analytics consumers to easily find and use analytics in support of their daily work. Learn how by requesting a personalized demo.
Written by ZenOptics Sr. Manager, Product Marketing. Julie Langenkamp
Over the past decade, the world of analytics has changed dramatically. What started out as an IT-driven effort to embrace the bundled reporting tools ERP solutions provided quickly morphed into a revolution—first with business intelligence tools and then with self-service analytics.
New tools emerged like Business Objects and Cognos followed by Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI, each with the intention of putting the power of data into the hands of the business user. Decision-makers were empowered to adopt the specialized tool that best met their needs. And adoption spread like wildfire.
But as business users embraced this new world of self-service reports, dashboards, and visualizations, challenges emerged.
Organizations found they were using multiple BI tools across their enterprise.
Reports became siloed, which added to the legacy and redundancy challenges. Analytics assets such as reports, dashboards, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and PDFs proliferated, with multiple versions living in multiple places, using data from many, often inconsistent, sources.
Costs increased as more and more users came on board. And users found themselves debating decisions because they didn’t know which version of the report they based the decision on was actually correct.
The challenges spread to IT departments as well. The teams that brought in these various tools needed IT’s help managing their output. But without intimate knowledge of the tools or their outputs, being the custodian of these tools was difficult at best.
In an attempt to manage the myriad of analytics assets that sprung up from every tool that came their way, many IT departments began to custom-develop “portals” to help catalog which assets lived in which systems. But these rudimentary efforts were difficult to use and time-consuming to manage and maintain, with all of the other priorities in the business.
As challenges mounted, organizations knew there must be a better way to manage the BI and analytics chaos across their organization. And with organizations feeling pressured to increase the value of the thousands of reports and supporting assets they created, time was of the essence.
But how could organizations make sense of this convoluted analytics landscape of specialized tools, embedded analytics, and Excel reports? Unlike their data and IT colleagues, these new analytics consumers live in processes—not data. They consume data in the form of reports. Or dashboards. Or visualizations. They need these analytics assets to make informed decisions, in the context of the process. And it’s critical that they feel confident that the report they are using is accurate and appropriate.
To overcome these challenges, many organizations implemented data governance and data catalogs. But these are tools for the consumers of data, including analysts and data scientists. Not those that are steeped in analytics.
And, while effective at cataloging data at the lowest level, governed data doesn’t matter if the report itself is incomplete, outdated, or simply inconsumable. Said differently, governed data and data catalogs alone do not address the real issue at hand: how can decision-makers consume reports in an experience designed with the analytics consumer in mind?
Decision-makers need a simple, business-friendly way to easily know which report is the one they need for the task at hand. A way to clear out the noise caused by multiple, similar versions of reports that all pull data from different, disparate sources and systems. They need visibility into where their report is coming from so they can confidently narrow down their options to find the one they need to make critical business decisions. They need an analytics catalog.
An analytics catalog helps business users access the analytics assets available across their enterprise. It provides color and context around the report so that they know they can use it to make business decisions. Without an analytics catalog and a simple unified view to take advantage of all of the analytics assets they’ve created, organizations will continuously find themselves with the inefficient report sprawl they face today.
What started out as a small nucleus of core, well-defined reports inevitably morphs into a proliferation of analytics assets that are similar, yet not quite the same. They may use different data sources. Or have the same name but use different underlying data. Or may simply be multiple versions of the same report created at different points in time.
Using an analytics catalog, analytics consumers can discover the analytics assets that best meet their needs, within an experience designed for them. They can clear the noise caused by the previous month’s reports that should have been purged (but weren’t) and old reports that are no longer accurate (or relevant). And they can access important insights from systems that were historically difficult to access or even unknown. The result is greater transparency into a shortlist of reports that business users can confidently use to make critical business decisions.
ZenOptics recognizes the challenges that the proliferation of analytics assets has caused for decision-makers and, ultimately, organizations as a whole. That’s why we developed an analytics catalog that provides a single, authoritative source for enterprise analytics assets. We use advanced integration technologies along with machine learning and AI to create an analytics catalog that brings cross-platform analytics assets together in a single interface to bridge the last mile from insights to decisions.
The results? IT no longer needs to create custom “portals” to solve this challenge. And analytics consumers gain access to cross-platform analytics assets with inherited security permissions, assurance that these assets are governed and organized to flow through prescribed paths for usability, and an accelerated, consistent, efficient, and confident decision-making process.
To learn more, watch our webcast entitled ”The Value of an Analytics Catalogue in a Data-Driven Enterprise.”
Written by ZenOptics CEO + Co-Founder Saurbh Khera
Tool migrations can occur for a variety of reasons. The migration could be required due to budget considerations, could be tied to a particular business use case or part of corporate modernization initiatives (such as digital transformation and increasing data and analytics use), or may be part of optimizing the business intelligence and analytics ecosystem.
Migrations can be complex, time-consuming, and costly. If not appropriately planned for and handled, the upfront costs to migrate can negate the planned savings for the first couple of years. This is especially true when an organization has waited too long (i.e., past sunset date) to retire a tool or if the mapping of the old application to the new was not thoughtfully and carefully done.
The right resources must be allocated to ensure everything that is intended to be in the new tool migrates successfully. Many companies migrate everything from one tool to the next, but what is messy and out of control in the existing tool will still be messy and out of control in the next. Migrations provide an opportunity to reset. Therefore, it’s important to understand what data is being used, by whom, and where that data comes from; which reports are current, accurate, and appropriate for use; and which KPIs/expressions and metrics are relevant for the organization.
From an architectural standpoint, potential integration challenges may surface with other tools in the ecosystem. It is important to research tool and version compatibility to avoid surprises. Custom and home-grown tools also require special consideration.
Often IT will recognize the technical and integration challenges but may underestimate the human emotional component. Change management is a vital element of a successful migration because people tend to resist change and, therefore, tool adoption may be adversely impacted. It is necessary to address change management and provide communication to familiarize people with a new tool, address any concerns over new skills required, and build confidence and comfort for users of the tool.
With a thoughtful approach to migration, these challenges can be mitigated.
The first step is to clearly understand your entire current BI and analytics landscape. Which tools are being used and how often? Are all the licenses being used, and are they distributed appropriately? Which reports and dashboards are the most important for users, and how often are they used? With this visibility into how the components of the existing ecosystem are being utilized, it will be easier to determine the needs of the new tool and exactly what should be migrated to create a clean environment.
It is necessary to then establish and communicate a detailed migration plan and timeline. Decide if the migration will be done “big-bang style” or in phases, and consider the impact of each approach.
One helpful approach is to adopt an analytics catalog to facilitate and assist the migration. An analytics catalog will deliver the visibility of the ecosystem and the analytics assets in the various tools. It will also establish a single access point for end users for all their BI and analytics information, regardless of which tool the content exists in.
Creating this view will ease the change management challenges because users need not worry about the underlying source system for their report; they access everything through a single pane of interaction. This increases productivity and efficiency for end users—even during migration—and sustains a familiar look and feel to ease concerns during the transition. Further, this allows IT and users to reconcile and validate that everything they need is in the new platform.
It is also beneficial to find a trusted implementation partner that is familiar with the environment, overarching strategy, and current/future needs of the organization to facilitate the transition, training, and adoption. Take advantage of experts who are available to guide and assist.
The right resources can set the stage for a successful migration. ZenOptics is a web application that brings BI and analytics assets into an analytics catalog and single pane of interaction to help ease the pain of migrations. ZenOptics can ease migrations through:
Plus, ZenOptics’ respected partners—like InfoZone—help organizations with strategic implementations and current/future migration plans, setting the stage for long-term success.
Migration work is never fully done. The pace of business today will continually drive change, newer or preferred tools will come along, the organization will prioritize new initiatives, and disruptive factors may change the landscape. The important thing is to always set the stage for the future and establish a migration strategy that applies to current and future scenarios while creating consistency and ease of use for businesspeople.
Learn more about how ZenOptics can help with tool migrations and unified access to cross-platform analytics assets here.
(Originally published as a guest blog by InfoZoneUS.com.)
Global analyst firm Gartner has unveiled its “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends in Data and Analytics for 2021.” It expects data and analytics worlds to “collide,” creating convergences in technologies, the roles of data and analytics workers, and processes. By 2023, decision intelligence will be a focus for many with more than 33% of large organizations expected to have analysts practicing decision intelligence, including decision modeling.
During the most recent Gartner Symposium, research VP Rita Sallam, presented that by 2023, 95% of Fortune 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics strategic initiatives as part of an enterprise information strategy.
“Analytics” is how people use insights from data to inform decision-making and achieve business objectives. “Governance” establishes guidelines and guardrails to ensure your data and analytic processes are being deployed as efficiently as possible. “Analytics governance” is a modern, redefined governance for enabled users that ensures information is both trusted and utilized properly throughout the analytics lifecycle. Similarly, “report governance” focuses on accurate, appropriate use of information for decision-making.
According to McKinsey, executives in every industry must shift from a data-governance model of loosely followed guidelines to report and analytics governance that makes the most of how people use data and analytics to create value.
Although the current users of big data and big analytics are primarily big corporations, reports and analytics governance could be equally advantageous in assisting decision-makers of small-to-medium-sized businesses across industries.
Structured use of data. With analytics governance, you can establish procedures and guidelines that ensure your analytics activities align with an enterprise information strategy. By establishing processes and organization structures, you can be certain that people recognize the importance of governance roles and their work is respected.
Simplified compliance. Whether regulated by industry watchdogs, by government, or self-regulated, analytics governance is a critical aspect of ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements.
Better decision-making. As with any organization, well-governed reports and analytics are better understood, more reliable, and more discoverable – making it easier for users to pull trusted, relevant, and useful data. This allows you to drive more business value from your data, as well as ensure clear accountability and ownership for more productive and confident decision-making.
Reduced risks. All the aforementioned benefits of analytics governance lead to improved operational efficiencies and reduced risks.
Getting started with report and analytics governance initiatives can seem daunting, and similar efforts often go amiss. Whether you are a traditional incumbent company or an emerging start-up, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. ZenOptics can help you establish and grow your governance program
ZenOptics’ Enterprise Decision Platform provides:
Powerful Metadata. Report usage metadata can show that a particular author develops reports that are frequently used. ZenOptics’ enterprise decision platform enables access to reusable, active metadata that can improve trust in information and reduce time to data delivery.
Certified Reports. Business users will benefit from a governed environment that offers automation with workflows and report certification for driving decisions.
Continuous Compliance. ZenOptics can help you navigate operational decision complexities, including adherence to regulations by practicing compliance-centric reporting.
While the benefits of analytics governance will differ for each organization, there is predictable business value it can deliver: improve decision-making processes that will drive sound business outcomes.
Are you ready to explore ZenOptics’ decision confidence platform and learn how it can influence business outcomes and behavior in your organization? Request a demo today.
Saying that “Data is king” still holds. Now more than ever, people are generating huge amounts of data every day—from social media to the Internet of Things (IoT) people have at their homes or offices. With the exponential growth of connected products and almost 4.57 billion active internet users, data creation is only poised to grow more as time goes by.
All of this data contributes to the wealth of enterprise information that organizations can analyze to find insights. A cohesive business intelligence and analytics environment that provides visibility into all enterprise information and reports will help businesspeople be able to deliver value from these analytic assets.
Further, since traditional data governance is designed to control only a small, critical subset of data, it is no longer sufficient in today’s massive data landscape. Organizations need a governed environment – encompassing all enterprise information and reports – where analysts and businesspeople can benefit from trusted data as they make operational decisions and do their daily work.
According to an IDC survey, more than half of businesses indicated a lack of trust in the results of their data analysis, as more and more data users are exploring various analytics tools without a proper governance perspective. Difficulty in keeping a unified approach in this complex landscape may result in more serious consequences for non-compliance.
Thus, organizations need to look beyond traditional data governance. In this age of modern data and analytics, a change of mindset is necessary—that which not only focuses on data but also on its reporting and analytics.
ZenOptics’ Decision Confidence Platform presents three keys on how to have a governed environment that will drive better decisions for your organization.
Empowering your businesspeople and analysts with a governed reporting environment of all enterprise information assets will not only drive better decisions but also ensure standardization and consistency as information is used from across the enterprise. To learn more, request a demo today!