Guided Analytics v. Self-Service Analytics

In today’s business arena, traditional Business Intelligence (BI) approaches are struggling to keep up the pace of ever-changing data.  Read this article on the pros and cons of Guided Analytics v. Self-Service Analytics.

Traditional BI capability was in the hands of just a few specialists and data was only accessible to a few decision-making managers. This approach was reflective of the traditional top-down business hierarchy where only a few Senior Managers made the decisions.

Guided Analytics v. Self-Service Analytics

Fortunately, times have changed and this thinking is not fit for modern times.

Data is an integral part of our working lives and we as employees expect the technology to access it on a daily basis. As technical savvy consumers, we expect to work in a technology-enabled environment with intuitive apps that are far superior to the ones that we access at home.

Fortunately, the world of BI is shifting to help reduce this accessibility gap by offering solutions for business and operational users. This approach focuses on people rather than just the data. Although data is necessary for decision making, it is the knowledge, experience, and intuition that people bring to the task that creates the sequence of questions that reveals the answers, not the data.

Companies that adopt a culture of bottom-up decision making and give everyone the tools to access data and analysis have the potential to make better data-driven decisions.

So your business has decided to implement BI, but you aren’t sure what system to use?

There are generally two types of BI systems: Guided Analytics or Self-service Analytics.

Guided analytics packages, such as QlikView, typically allow the company to set up, with the help of a developer, prepared business applications featuring dashboards, charts and calculations that will all be updated based on user explorations via clicks and selections.  However, the end user typically has no ability to create their own data visualisations or bring in one of their own data sources without the assistance of a developer.

Self-service applications, such as Qlik Sense, empower the end user to explore any data they have access to and easily create personalised reports and dynamic dashboards to explore vast amounts of data. It does not require a build and publish approach since every user can simply drag-n-drop to build or extend their visual analysis.

There is data everywhere across a business which has transformed everyone within the business into an analyst. There are no longer passive employees. Businesses that fail to harness this opportunity with the right BI approach are missing out on the huge potential benefits of user-driven decision making.

If you have any questions about business intelligence solutions in general, or our BI offerings, QlikView and Qlik Sense, in particular, please get in touch.

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