• Home
  • Diver BI Group
    • Diver | BI
    • Customer Commendations
    • Videos
    • Case Studies
    • Documents and Brochures
    • Diver BI Group Privacy Policy
  • Articles
    • News
    • Accolades
    • Blog
    • Ask Anthony
      • Common ODBC Errors
  • The Team
    • Key Experts
    • Members
      • Dynamic Business Informatics
      • Envisage
      • Chartwell IT
      • Cloud-Works Solutions Ltd
      • Data Management Business Insight
      • Manitex
      • Equiniti ICS
      • Pharma IT
      • Pinnula
      • Formell
      • IBI
    • Partners
      • Dimensional Insight US
      • Dimensional Insight EU
      • Dimensional Insight Asia
      • DI Panama
      • ID Technology (Brazil)
      • Infotool (Nordic Countries)
      • iXias Software – DI France
      • Vision IT
      • KDE Group (Israel)
      • Zight -Partner for Transport
      • 24/7 Uptime
  • Applications
    • Property
      • Property Prices Portal
    • Supply Chain
      • Retail
      • Distributor
      • Wholesale
      • Manufacturing
      • Produce
      • Beverage Alcohol Suppliers
      • Beverage Alcohol Distributors
      • Autoparts
      • Transport
      • Public Transport
      • DI Program Advisor
    • Healthcare
      • Healthcare
      • DI Surgery Advisor
      • DI Physician Performance Advisor
      • Pharma BI Applications of Diver
    • Finance
      • Finance
      • DI GL Advisor
    • Mobile & SaaS
      • Diver BI SaaS
      • SaaS for Sales Gap Analysis
      • BI designed for Tablet
      • DiveTab – Mobile BI
    • Diversity
      • Travel & Tourism
      • Colleges & Universities
      • Waste Management
      • Parking
      • Telecom Brokerage
      • Economic Trends
      • Maps
      • Smart Meters
      • Carbon Emissions Management
  • Workbench
  • Contact
    • Free Consultation with One of Our Experts
    • Add a New Revenue Stream as a Partner

DiverBIGroup

Business Intelligence Experts

Diver BI Group Blog Who can Mitigate the Self-Service BI Free-for-All?

Who can Mitigate the Self-Service BI Free-for-All?

3rd October 2017

In my last blog I talked about how you should leverage the expertise of your own in-house experts, such as category managers, to help with creating the business rules that allow you to run automated BI reports. Using their expert knowledge you can incorporate the nuances of product or data understanding that they have developed over years of experience, and create reports based on these insights, lessening the threats to your business from key-man dependencies.

Outside Experts Complement In-House Knowledge

But in recent user surveys BI professionals within end-user organisations have been reporting that their firms still look outside for data and analytics service providers to help them with their implementations and ongoing BI developments. In some places I have read that this figure could be almost 50% of decision makers and maybe another 20% on top of that this coming year.

Why is this? First we should remember that business knowledge and expertise with the running of any business doesn’t always necessarily translate into effectively organising this knowledge using the most powerful and up to date technologies.

It might be easy enough for an Expert in their field to construct a standalone report or suite of reports that replicate their previously manual analysis. But when it comes to best practices when scaling up these techniques to other areas of the business, the methodology and discipline to ensure data integrity, and to streamline an Enterprise wide BI tool is just not in their repertoire.

DI Triangle of success
Best Practice and Scaleability

That’s where Experts from outside the organisation play their part. They may not have the detailed knowledge about seasonality or whatever key drivers are the domain of your in-house managers, but BI consultants and data integration experts have designed and delivered hundreds of applications over many years, with many diverse clients, so naturally they have tried and tested techniques and time-saving devices. They also know how to ensure that your BI application is robust and scaleable; and will stand up to the growth of your business. After all, most successful BI implementations are swiftly followed by a surge in profitability!

Secondly, whilst your in-house key experts are usually very efficient and get right to the heart of whatever insights will improve the position of your company in the marketplace, often using quick and dirty methods to get information out of your systems, they are not usually interested in spending their time documenting procedures, creating standards or preparing guidelines for others to follow them. In short, their success depends on the speed of their reactions and their predictions. This can be at the expense of a lack of documentation and data governance which is vital for an organisation whose coherence depends on it using one version of the truth.

The role of an external BI expert is crucial when it comes to guiding the organisation towards better alignment of its goals with its methods for achieving them. A trusted partner can help tame those maverick geniuses whose absences, planned or unplanned, can leave the company in dire straits. A disciplined project manager will ensure that automated routines are created and document the in-house experts’ knowledge to share it as far as possible with colleagues who don’t have the same experience.

Freedom v Governance – the Balance is Tipping Back.

data governance
This trend for management of an Enterprise wide BI platform is starting to replace the recent explosion of self-service analytics, where every person who was long-frustrated by the tight reins held on data access was suddenly like a kid in candy store, with the advent of free-to-use tools for data integration and visualisation. This freedom to explore data has been one of the biggest changes in the controlling power of IT departments in the last 30 years. It has many benefits but also a lot of dangers. The data is no longer governed by database managers and so the stories it tells are as varied and deceptive as the myriad of offerings and the people that use them. A managed, enterprise wide BI platform used by these same individuals seems to be the latest solution towards mitigating what was becoming an uncontrollable free-for-all.

About Debbie Lonsdale

Debbie Lonsdale

Debbie Lonsdale has been working with the Diver Solution as a BI Consultant at Dynamic Business Informatics since 2008. Her previous experience includes computer programming, analytical and technical roles, team management, account management, sales and marketing in a variety of market sectors, including the Travel Industry and Distribution. She combines this experience as an all round ICT professional in the BI sector.

Tags: BI consultant, BI Expert, BI Platform, data governance, diverbi, End-to-End BI Platform, Enterprise BI

Articles

  • News
  • Accolades
  • Blog
  • Ask Anthony
    • Common ODBC Errors
  • Diver | BI
  • Customer Commendations
  • Videos
  • Case Studies
  • Documents and Brochures
  • Diver BI Group Privacy Policy

Dynamic Business Informatics Ltd

Distributors of The Diver Solution & Diver Platform, providing business consultancy services, products and applications derived from the Diver Solution & Diver Platform.
14 Mellifont Avenue
Dun Laoghaire
Co. Dublin

+353 1 2302022

10 Kenyon Street
Nenagh
Co Tipperary

+353 67 43309

Contact Us

We would love to hear from you! Please submit your query and we will get in touch with you shortly.

Email addresses are never sold, rented, or shared. See our Privacy Policy.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Accolades

  • Dresner Wisdom of Crowds 2022 – Best in Class Results
  • Klas 2022 – A Grades for Dimensional Insight
  • Dimensional Insight Earns Top Marks in 2021 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study
  • Best in Klas 2021
  • 5 Takeaways from the 2020 Wisdom of Crowds Report

Copyright © 2022 Diver BI Group · Privacy Policy · website by cubecolour

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.


What Are Cookies?


As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or 'break' certain elements of the sites functionality.


For more general information on cookies, please read "What Are Cookies".


How We Use Cookies


We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case they are used to provide a service that you use.


Disabling Cookies


You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of the this site. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.


The Cookies We Set




  • Account related cookies


    If you create an account with us then we will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.




  • Login related cookies


    We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.




  • Forms related cookies


    When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.




  • Site preferences cookies


    In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.




Third Party Cookies


In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.




  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.


    For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.




More Information


Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren't sure whether you need or not it's usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.


However if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through our contact page

Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT