As customers, we’re all familiar with the trend toward self-service: we pump our own gas, act as our own bank tellers and change our own flights at the airline kiosk. As employees, we have become accustom to selecting our own benefits online and using internal help desks that replace live reps and online support websites.
Companies are conditioning us to serve ourselves, and for the most part we like it. Self-service gives customers the freedom to use services when they want and how they want without the help or permission of a live human being.
Companies want our lives as customers to be easier and more convenient, but they also want the gains that come from offloading work onto their customers. Customer self-service gives companies the twin benefit of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
The cost savings are significant. Automated systems that shift the workload to the customer operate at a fraction of the cost of those that require a live person to serve the customer.
Self-service is not just for customers anymore. The latest trend in business intelligence (BI) is to provide self-service capabilities that give company end-users direct access to BI data without the expensive involvement of the IT department.
BI Self-service Options
What does BI self-service look like?
Most employees who use business intelligence data aren’t IT pros, and they lack the skills to navigate a complex database with no help. Self-service requires the IT department to put in work upfront to create a simple and intuitive user interface. The interface must also offer easy-to-use reporting and query tools.
Keep Data Safe in the Sandbox
IT managers are likely to develop a case of heartburn when they ponder giving untrained users access to a business intelligence database. To mitigate the risk of mishandling, corrupting or just plain deleting key information from the BI database, IT can control access to data by creating specially assigned rights for self-service users.
IT can also isolate crucial data and servers by creating a sandbox. This is a specially designed database that protects valuable data from being modified by end-users. A sandbox environment allows BI users to run queries and reports and slice and dice data however they need to without the careful supervision of the IT department, and without compromising valuable data.
The Right Kind of Self-service
Self-service business intelligence gives its users the ability to access the data that they need completely independent of the IT department. While this freedom gives BI professionals far more flexibility in doing their routine work, it must be combined with clearly understood policies and procedures that govern the way end-users access and slice-and-dice data. Good governance prevents faulty analysis, stovepipes of information and inefficient use of data.
Signs of Success
Organizations can use self-service business intelligence to reduce costs by allowing BI users to access data without the help of the IT department. Companies are far more likely to get the most out of self-service business intelligence when they develop simple interfaces, store vital information in protected databases and create clearly- defined policies and procedures for accessing data.
