Self-service business intelligence helps organizations quickly analyze data and gain insights to make informed and correct decisions. It empowers business users to analyze data on their own, without relying on developers. IBM Planning Analytics is a powerful tool for enabling self-service BI. In this blog, we discuss how IBM Planning Analytics can be used to enable self-service BI and the benefits it can bring to the business.

What is self-service Business Intelligence?

Self-service BI is a system that enables business users to access and analyze data without requiring IT or data science expertise. With self-service BI, users can quickly pull data from multiple sources, create their own reports and dashboards, and share insights with others in the organization. This approach can significantly improve business agility by enabling users to make data-driven decisions quickly and respond to changing market conditions.

How can IBM Planning Analytics enable self-service business intelligence?

Here are some of the key features that make IBM Planning Analytics an ideal choice of tool to enable a self-service BI method:

Data Accessibility:

IBM Planning Analytics allows users to access data from multiple sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and cloud-based applications. This enables business users to quickly pull data they need for analysis, without relying on developers.

Data Visualization:

IBM Planning Analytics provides a range of visualization tools, including graphs, charts, and dashboards, that allow users to present data in an easy-to-understand format. This makes it easier for users to analyze data and gain insights.

Collaborative Features:

IBM Planning Analytics supports collaboration, allowing users to work together to analyze data and share insights. With real-time collaboration features, users can work together to identify trends and patterns in data and share their findings with others in the organization.

Advanced Analytics:

IBM Planning Analytics includes a range of advanced analytics tools, including predictive analytics and machine learning capabilities. These tools can help users to identify patterns and trends in data that may not be immediately obvious, enabling them to make more informed decisions.

Benefits of self-service BI with IBM Planning Analytics

Enable self-service business intelligence with IBM Planning Analytics to gain the following business benefits:

Improved Business Agility:

By enabling business users to analyze data on their own, without the need for developers, businesses can respond quickly to changing market conditions and make informed decisions.

Cost Savings:

By empowering business users to analyze data on their own, businesses can reduce the need for IT or data science resources, resulting in cost savings.

Better Data Governance:

IBM Planning Analytics provides a range of tools to ensure data governance, including data access controls and audit trails. This ensures that data is secure and accurate, and that users are accessing only the data they are authorized to consume.

Getting started with IBM Planning Analytics for self-service BI

Getting started with IBM Planning Analytics for self-service BI is straightforward. Here are the basic steps:

Data Preparation:

Before beginning any analysis, it’s important to ensure that the data is clean, in the correct format and that there are existing pre-prepared measures. IBM Planning Analytics provides a range of data preparation tools, including data cleansing and data integration, to ensure that the data is ready for analysis.

Data Modeling:

Once the data is prepared, it needs to be modeled in a way that makes it easy for business users to analyze. IBM Planning Analytics provides a range of modeling tools, including cube design and dimension management, to help users create a data model that meets their specific needs.

Analysis:

With the data prepared and modeled, users can begin analyzing the data using IBM Planning Analytics’ range of analysis tools, including data visualization, predictive analytics, and machine learning. Users can create their own reports and dashboards to present their findings in a way that is easy to understand.

Collaboration and Sharing: Once users have analyzed the data and gained insights, they can collaborate with others in the organization to share their findings and work together to make informed decisions by publishing they newly created reports.

What challenges you might face?

Identify data selection criteria:

It´s important to understand what data and metrics the users need to easily create their own reports and analysis to achieve a self-service environment.

Data Quality:

Self-service BI puts a greater emphasis on data quality, as users may not have the same level of expertise in data management as the developers. Poor data quality can lead to inaccurate insights and wrong decisions.

Data Overload:

With the ability to access and analyze large amounts of data, users may face challenges in identifying the most relevant data and creating meaningful insights. Since users may not be used to digest this amount of data it might be overwhelming and the self-service incentive might fail.

User Training:

While IBM Planning Analytics tools are designed to be user-friendly, they still require a fair amount training for users to achieve effective use.

Conclusion

Enabling self-service BI with IBM Planning Analytics can provide significant business benefits, including improved agility, cost savings and better data governance. With its range of features, including data accessibility, data visualization, collaborative capabilities and advanced analytics, IBM Planning Analytics is an ideal tool for enabling self-service BI. By following the basic steps of data preparation, data modeling, analysis, and collaboration and sharing, organizations can quickly get started with self-service BI using IBM Planning Analytics.