How to ensure data & analytics success with self-service analytics
If you are looking to become a data-driven organization, you are definitely not alone. By enabling your teams to use the right data at the right time, besides many other advantages you will make it easier for them to serve your customers better, keep an eye on progress and shifts, take strategic budget decisions and stay ahead of your competition.
Why use self-service analytics?
Self-service analytics enable professionals to get the insights they need without having to rely on analysts or technical teams to access data and reports. Non-technical staff like executives, sales and marketing personnel get access to data to generate reports so they can make data-driven business decisions. For instance, salespeople are able to prepare more effective customer engagements while marketing teams can target better content and messages which leads to better conversions.
The trend of adopting self-service analytics is rapidly growing and according to Gartner: “Organizations are embracing self-service analytics to democratize analytics capabilities among all end users. Gartner inquiries reveal a seven-fold increase in self-service topics since 2019.”
What are the challenges for businesses?
On one hand, self-service reporting tools are very useful for creating reports and dashboards, keeping informed and making conscious decisions. On the other hand, “mastering self-service analytics at scale continues to evade organizations, leading to disconnected business value. Data and analytics leaders must showcase self-service value, foster collaborative development between IT and business, and adopt lightweight management and control” – says Gartner.
There are many challenges, and very often, users do not know how to read the data. According to Gartner, “the absence of control frameworks to govern self-service content remain one of the top reasons for self-service failure.
“A self-service analytics approach must build a holistic, balanced ecosystem that includes data, people, process and technology focused on delivering business value.”
This Gartner research outlines three best practices that are key to enabling self-service analytics:
- “Aligning self-service initiatives with business goals to measure value. Begin with the end in mind – the business objective – as opposed to beginning with the data and a tool in search of a problem to solve. Doing so clarifies the business outcome and the key metrics to be measured.
- Building collaborative development between IT and business that increases trust. Identify internal and external stakeholder outcomes. This helps assess the impact of self-service analytics. Often, stakeholders’ latent needs become newer business opportunities or use cases.
- Incorporating a lightweight management and control of self-service content. Self-service analytics must do much more than simply provide analytic capability. Include tools and processes that address the complete end-to-end analytic process pipeline. The goal is to enable the acquisition, preparation and organization of data in a way that lends itself to data analysis. This leads, finally, to the delivery of results and the measurement of the impact of those results on the organization’s bottom line objectives.”
At Pitcher, “Insights” offer all of our customers a self-service analysis tool that works with your main application and automates much of the reporting and dashboard processes. These allow non-technical users to explore the collected data and share it, and they are integrated throughout your existing stack, respecting your data governance and maintaining your ‘single source of truth’.
The key takeaway of this Gartner research is the recommendations for all executive leaders who are focused on building a more successful data-driven business. Read your complimentary research now: How to enable self-service analytics to ensure data & analytics success.
Gartner, How to Enable Self-Service Analytics to Ensure D&A Success, Anirudh Ganeshan, Carlie Idoine,16 June 2021
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