Blog: Why Self Service BI isn't working
As the BI market matures, I often get asked what is my view of the data visualisation market? Dashboard’s creation tools first became established 7-8 years ago. Their prime role was to make life easier for IT staff and data analysts who were becoming overloaded with requests for more and more data as organisations became more data aware. In fact, many vendors basic value proposition was about empowering business users to self-serve without the need for an IT department.
I have seen many organisations struggle with this and wondered when people would get beyond the hype of the marketing message. In my view, the adoption of these tools hasn’t lived up to their promise of giving users easy access to the data they need.
Over the last few months, I came across a great piece of writing from a specialist BI research consultancy. The Eckerson Group are one of the companies who in my view have analysed what is happening in the real world:
“Despite its promise to liberate users from reliance on their IT department, self-service analytics is not that easy to achieve. Many companies that have deployed self-service analytics have become inundated by a tsunami of conflicting reports, spreadmarts, renegade reporting systems and other data silos. These companies have learned that the goal of self service is not unfettered liberation from IT, but rather a partnership that balances freedom with control, flexibility and standards, governance and self-service”
Source: Eckerson Group 2017
Why hasn’t the self-service approached worked for business users?
To understand, what has gone wrong you need to look at the different types of users and their needs. For me in most organisations these are broken down into four groups :
IT Department – predominantly those in charge of selecting BI tools for the business.
Data Analysts - traditionally provide reports to the information owners, or line-of-business (LOB) managers. In smaller organisations this function is merged with the IT department.
Information Owners - want to undertake analysis but have a low IT skill level and don’t want to spend large amounts of time manipulating the data.
Information Consumers - people in operational business roles, who just need access to the data they need (& only the data they need) in an easy to digest, easy to manipulate format.
In traditional BI deployments, IT provides the data, which is organised into a logical set of functions by the data analysts, based on the criteria set by the information owners and then distributed to the information consumers. One of the issues with this is the large lead time and the upfront investment in time before business users benefit from the system.
It seemed logical then to move from business intelligence solutions delivered via a Centralised Control approach to Self Service BI by making the tools available, The aim of this was to provide easy-to-use visualisation tools sitting on top of something like a data warehouse that users could then create their own views of the data. This approach has worked well for the Data Analysts but the business users have found these products far too complex and have not adopted them.
A Business Week Research study into 406 U.S. IT Executives and 675 Business Executives found that 55% of business users, contrasted with only 18% of IT users found difficulty in finding the information they require when using Business Intelligence. (Source: BusinessWeek Research Services)
Perhaps users are expected to be more proficient in these tools than they actually are?
In our experience, users in many organisations have reverted back to Excel. Even in large-scale operations MS Excel is still the reporting tool that is most widely used, even though this was never what it was designed for.
Data is not useful in its raw format, which is produced from line of business systems. The reports which can be produced are then based on the data available rather than on what the business really needs.
The tools that are selected, were great for the data analysts who found the tools easier to use than the traditional Cognos / Business Objects type approach, but are still far too complex and time consuming for the business users (information owners and consumers).
Organisations implement a “one size fits all“ approach to reporting meaning that individual requirements aren’t met, and actually the solution doesn’t really meet any one particular requirement fully.
So what do organisations need to do to be successful?
Based on our experience, and that of our clients, we recommend the following steps to overcome these issues:
• Don’t look for a “one size fits all” solution. The tools that business users need will be simpler in their design and their approach than the data analysts. Many organisations have begun to select different tools for the different user communities.
• Implement packaged dashboards that relate to one key application area of the business (e.g. HR) and then grow out from there by adding in new datasets and connections. Packaged application suppliers have in-depth knowledge of their data and can ensure that the dashboards are fit for purpose.
• Focus dashboard design on the real questions that a business user would ask. Think carefully about the drill downs and routes through the data. Be careful about providing users with a generic self service module which will contain too much data as this will prove to be too complex
• Develop different dashboards that are relevant to different roles within the business – for example high level KPIs for the Executive team that are optimised for mobile devices, and data-intensive detailed dashboards for operational management. This will grow user adoption and the benefits users will get from the application
Roger Stocker, Sales Director