Rapid-Fire Business Intelligence

Business intelligence continues to be a top CIO priority, as executives and managers demand greater visibility into business data much faster. Traditional business intelligence platforms have fallen short of delivering rapid analytics and insights. But that's changing. A new kind of BI is here: rapid-fire BI.

“We’re now able to discover trends and patterns in our data that were impossible using other tools”

Rapid-fire BI is a new approach to providing true business intelligence delivering dramatically better business results. While traditional BI platforms perfected scheduled, parameterized reports, they do not do what they now espouse: provide self-service business intelligence.

So how do you recognize rapid-fire BI? Look for 5 distinct characteristics:

1: User-Driven Approach

The most important characteristic of rapid-fire BI is that business users drive the applications, not specialized developers. The result is that everyone wins. The IT team can stop the backlog of change requests and start spending time on strategic IT issues. Users can connect to data and create reports when they need to answer questions.

The traditional practice of trying to anticipate the data and analytic needs of each employee is impossible - can an IT department really read the minds of business users? IT departments need to be freed from the burden of creating reports for users and from dealing with change requests. Business users are more productive when performing their own analysis given the proper tools.

AAA Allied Group, a large insurer/auto club, grew frustrated with having to have 5 Crystal Reports developers on staff. They wanted to increase the speed and efficiency of their operations; they knew they needed a user-driven approach to their BI. So they enabled their business people with a BI solution from Tableau that allowed end-users to get the data information they needed right when they needed it in terms that end-users understood.

BI that is truly user-driven eliminates need for IT report writing or change requests, provides secure built-in collaboration capabilities, and enables sharing.

2: Easy Visual Interfaces

A well-designed visual interface lets users focus on their questions- not about how to use the software or how to get to their data. The software disappears into the background.

Kaleida Health, a not-for-profit health care provider, understands the importance of a well designed interface. Said Dan Gerena, Director of Kaleida's business intelligence competency center, "Tableau's simple and intuitive interface enables Kaleida Health to make sense of the more than 1 million patient encounters we have per year while identifying outliers, trends and opportunities that had previously remained hidden in the data, allowing us to drive positive changes in health care to the community we serve. Tableau's effectiveness in improving our business processes was immediately evident upon deploying the technology. We're now able to discover trends and patterns in our data that were impossible using other tools."

Important elements to look for include an interactive and easy to use user interface, built-in geographic intelligence, and drill-down and drill-through capabilities.

3: Flexible Configurations

Installation and deployment should not require large software bundles, professional services or specialized IT help. Rapid-fire BI allows organizations to buy and deploy licenses as needed - whether it's one license, ten or thousands. And rapid-fire BI allows IT and users to access virtually any and every data source on the fly.

Important elements to look for in a scalable BI solution include flexible configurations, the ability to download and test drive a free trial of the software, access to virtually any data source, the ability to link to other applications, and the ability to embed reports in team pages and Sharepoint sites. To get users up and running fast, look for free help desk support and on-demand training too.

4: High Performance

Business users are impatient. BI needs to be fast. To get that speed, traditional business intelligence platforms require a total replication of data into the BI system's proprietary format.

So instead of reaping the rewards of better analytics, employees are spending time shuffling data back and forth from one format to another. Ask a knowledgeable employee about their time spent on data; chances are he or she will say they spend 80% of their time moving and formatting data and just 20% analyzing it.

Rapid-fire BI is different. It does not require transformation of data into a proprietary format or silos. What it does do is allow the application layer to leverage the power of your existing data infrastructure. It lets users examine and understand that data easily. Data is in diverse sources and places; business problems are drivers as well. BI should be able to handle both.

5: Easy IT Administration

Traditional BI has been a chore for IT: installation, deployment, programming, report writing, change requests, support and maintenance. This doesn't even include the costly professional services that are required to install and periodically maintain the system.

Rapid-fire BI makes the life of an IT executive and manager easier. There is little for IT to install or maintain. Most importantly, rapid-fire BI adheres to existing security and authentication models and does not require new security measures to ensure compliance. Scalability is built-in and can go to thousands of users by leveraging low-cost hardware options.

Rapid-fire BI provides end-user freedom in an environment that leverages existing IT infrastructure and recognizes that not all data is in the enterprise data warehouse. It's about where people can take advantage of the new generation of easy visual interfaces that make trends and outliers easy to detect. And it's about low cost of ownership and speed to results. It grows to fit your needs on your timeline, leverages your existing infrastructure as much as possible and never requires long implementation phases or specialized technical skills.