Business Intelligence

Self-service BI: What you need to know?

Self-service BI allows business users to examine data, produce insights, and build dashboards or reports without relying on IT. Read more.

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As the pace of business quickens, business users require faster, easier access to data that will allow them to keep up with and remain ahead of the evolving market.

However, many businesses ignore this obvious trend because of the mistaken belief that self-service BI is a process that requires time, resources and technical skills. And what happens if we say that there is a solution that does not require all this?

What is self-service Business Intelligence?

Self-service BI allows business users to examine data, produce insights, and build dashboards or reports without relying on IT, data scientists, or analysts. The goal of self-service business intelligence is to provide all employees, regardless of analytics skill level, with insights that will help them make better decisions.

Differences Between BI and Self-service BI

Traditional BI relies on IT teams to develop data analytics methods in order to fulfill business objectives. Business users in sales, finance, human resources, and other departments store data and request that analysts query it to generate performance reports, forecast trends, and so on. This technique allowed IT teams complete control over data quality, but it slowed their performance.

Self-service business intelligence, on the other hand, provides users with complete control over the data analysis process, from data ingestion and transformation to the creation of intuitive representations. The data teams remain involved in the process, focusing on how business information is absorbed and regulated. Analysts might use their data mining expertise and project modeling skills instead of responding to ad hoc reporting requirements.

What to look for in a self-service BI tool

All business intelligence tools have three primary functions: data collection, analysis, and visualization. To evaluate self-service BI products, you must delve deeper into their implementation, usability, and dashboarding capabilities.

A self-service BI platform should be easy to use for both technical and non-technical users. End business users ought to be able to connect new data sources on their own, without the need to involve a technical team member.

You should also draw attention to the possibility of querying data with no knowledge of SQL. You need a tool that will allow you to query your database without a single line of code. Another extremely important aspect is the data visualization process. It should be a matter of one or two clicks to turn your queried data into data visualizations and put them into dashboards.

Last but not least, purchasing a self-service BI tool should be an enduring investment that grows alongside your business. One feature which indicates how well a self-service BI tool can scale is data stores. 

A data store allows you to control who has access to specific sorts of data. For example, you may develop a data store for marketing initiatives that contains only the data points that a marketing team member may require. Data stores are essential as your organization expands because they allow you to control access to your data on a micro level.

How to improve your business by using self-service BI?

Although self-service business intelligence might be difficult to implement, businesses are discovering significant benefits in embracing a data-driven culture. Choosing a BI system that integrates with the existing data architecture, establishing training programs, and developing a self-service BI strategy can all lead to quick implementation.

InsightBase has simplified the process even more - without IT knowledge and without any training you can query even huge databases. We use AI to help you analyze your data through a simple chat with the database. You can ask questions in plain text and get answers in seconds. Start now and convince discover how simple and effective it is! 

 

Do you need help with your data?

InsightBase is an AI-powered data analytics platform that helps you make better business decisions.

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