Thursday, February 27, 2014

Self-service BI



Most BI solutions today require business users to look at standard pre-configured reports that have been put in place by the IT department. Self-service BI allows end users to generate their own customized reports without the intervention of the IT staff. This benefits both parties as it makes end users more independent while freeing up the time of the IT staff.

While gathering requirements, the IT staff may not completely understand how the data is required to be presented to the user. The self-service approach ensures that nothing is lost in translation.

SSBI solutions are intended to be used by users who do not have much technical knowledge. Two important factors in a self-service approach are:

  • User interface: The UI must be intuitive and easy to use.
  • Metadata dictionary: The IT staff needs to provide the users with a metadata dictionary for the users to understand how the data can be used.

Self-service BI sounds like the perfect solution as it empowers users to get things done without the involvement of the IT staff. However, there is a down side to the self-service approach.

Handing over the power to end users means having a lot more users accessing data and querying the system. Having multiple users firing queries and generating reports simultaneously could overload the system. Security is another concern as the system would need to ensure that access to sensitive data is controlled based upon a user’s position in the organization.

Another problem is that of organizing reports. Multiple analysts could each have multiple reports and analyses of the data. While making a decision it is important to have all the data in one place. Organizing the data could be an expensive and time-consuming process.

Self-service BI with its many privileges sounds promising and it does seem like the pros could outweigh the cons. There are several companies offering such solutions. For example, Business Objects' Crystal Reports and Microsoft’s project Gemini. However it is still early times and it isn't easy to forecast how SSBI could be implemented as a full-blown enterprise solution.

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