What self-service BI means for business

Organizations are rethinking business intelligence (BI) to drive strategic success. As the need for faster decision-making grows, self-service BI is rising in demand. While users often turn to traditional tools like Power BI to scale up their reporting, in reality, without an IT team building dashboards and connecting the data flow, these insights are limited. Let’s instead delve into what makes legitimate self-service BI stand out for the end user compared to setups that rely on data scientists or loads of manual data wrangling to work.

What is self-service BI?

Self-service BI provides end business users (i.e., non-technical folks) with business intelligence tools and apps to create interactive dashboards and data visualizations on their own. It’s a bit like online banking — everyone can control their own finances but have automated tools guiding them, removing the bottlenecks of traditional BI platforms

Benefits of self-service BI

The demand for real time data analysis and reporting is growing from sales to operations. When self-service BI tools are used and available, there is less of a demand on specialised data analysts in the IT and finance department to more people in the business. This ultimately speeds up decision-making.

Ease of use brings higher adoption

Most people lack the technical skills to work complex systems so a user-friendly interface with automated data sets helps to get more people embracing the software.

Vendors will provide product demonstrations so your team can get a glimpse into how it works while you are in your discovery stage. A great new feature Phocas analytics has added for new users is the AI function. New users type in a question about their products, customers or people and then Phocas instantly delivers the insight plus the steps it took to get the result. This functionality helps business users to learn how the self-service tool works very quickly. 

It is also useful to read product reviews of self-service business intelligence as there are categories for ease of use and most third party sites compare the main self-service offerings. 

Customer reviews are also useful as you hear from actual users of the product and often they will advise their job role and industry which you can relate to. Again, ease of of use is an important characteristic for most people so read what they have to say. 

The automation of data sources

Automated data flow is another key functionality of self-service BI because up-to-date data processing saves time and ensures data quality is accurate. The right BI system will integrate seamlessly with your ERP and include other designated data sources.  

Strong data automations rely on a vendor that builds and maintains API connectors and carefully validates both the the initial data preparation and ongoing data management.

When everyone works from the one version of data truth there's less time chasing up inaccuracies in spreadsheets and fewer bottlenecks caused by data silos. So whenever the non-technical user checks dashboards or run queries, they know that the business data is up-to-date and reflects the same data in their ERP and other business systems.

The built-in workflows allow people to set-alerts to notify them of key variances such as when products fall below set margins which quickens the decision-making process. Users don’t need to worry about running sql queries to get actionable insights, for an ad hoc query they simply drag and drop in the self-service analytics.

Finally, any self-service BI solution you choose should offer customizable security controls for each user. Such controls restrict the user’s access to only the data relevant to their position. This prevents your warehouse team from accessing company financial information, for example.

Before you commit to any specific software you might want to include people from different teams so they can advise the data sources that are important to them as well as the type of metrics they need to know - you can cross check this information with the vendor.

Another interesting point is that the Phocas self-service BI software that forms part of a broader BI and FP&A platform runs in the cloud but also manages all your data sources in sustainable data warehouses.

It frees up your IT team

Another advantage of self-service BI is freedom from the challenges of traditional business intelligence reporting. Since users of self-service BI can create their own reports using visually engaging charts and graphs, your IT department has more time to focus on improving data models and data quality. For instance, as remote work has taken off, IT departments need to improve data governance and make sure everyone has to the correct data they need for making fast and accurate business decisions.

Implementing a self-service BI solution is not overwhelming when you select a top-tier solution. Phocas data analytics, for example, has 20 years of experience helping manufacturing, distribution and retail businesses achieve success. The out-of-the-box solution is designed with  user-friendly dashboards so users can start making data-driven decisions almost immediately.

What self-service BI means for business

The growth of self-service BI will have noticeable impacts on business, including:

A power shift – the IT department used to own nearly all aspects of BI software usage. The self-service model largely removes IT from the equation. After a solution has been made available to staff, the onus of operations falls to the individual business functions. As a result, decreased IT involvement translates to reduced overheads and opportunities for IT to deal with more important issues. In turn, staff becomes more empowered to solve problems without calling for IT to help.

Heightened integration – businesses run multiple databases and need to find ways to leverage data between them to increase discovery. Solutions that offer the integration of financial, operational, sales and customers data will scale.

Move beyond Excel - we all know businesses have dependency on this ubiquitous tool and for good reason. However, there are certain tasks like storing business data that are not beneficial use cases for this software. 

Self-service BI reveals insights that all your people can address. With the right approach and consolidated data, you can use it proactively—such as spotting business opportunities ahead of competitors or identifying potential risks before they escalate. Once you achieve a data-driven culture, your business is bound to grow and be more efficient.