Key steps to success with self-service analytics

As data—and its applications—grow exponentially, the appeal of self-service analytics can grow with it.

Coursing through your business’ veins like life blood, data holds answers to a myriad of questions that span the organization, from marketing to operations to finance. But if you’re anything like your peers, you can struggle to keep pace with the business intelligence requests every stakeholder seems to be making.

Of course marketing and sales want in on the business intelligence riches, as does your CFO, your CEO and even your recruiting organization. But your team—and you—can only do so much in a day.

All of this can help explain why self-service analytics solutions are gaining in appeal: they provide data consumers the ability to analyze data, uncover insights and optimize, all on their own.

We know self-service solutions are all but ubiquitous, with Gartner’s Technology Insight for Modern Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms finding 80 percent of survey respondents were either introducing or significantly increasing self-service analysis.

For all its advantages, a self-service solution ultimately means giving power to the (business) people, and with that come the expected challenges and growing pains between the IT department and business stakeholders.

So how do you tame the exciting, chaotic frontier that is self-service analytics? A comprehensive business intelligence management strategy is key to a successful self-service endeavor.

Centers of Excellence are Indeed, Excellent

For starters, create your own business intelligence Center of Excellence (COE). Your business units are taking on more analytical tasks to answer growing business questions faster than before, but this also means you are at risk for creating a reporting wild west. Establishing a COE will organize your self-service efforts by providing jump start resources and development standards that will enable your IT power user, analyst or new business consumer.

This is designed to work for a small team and scale as demand increases and your enterprise fosters more business analysts. After implementing a COE, you will promote reporting consistency and coordination for cross-functional initiatives in a shorter timeframe.