BI Best Practices: Streamline Report Management in Your Data-Driven Business
While reading this blog, you have either implemented an analytics solution or are thinking of doing so. In either case, simply implementing business intelligence and analytics won’t get you the results. Like with any other software, there is a set of best practices to follow to get the most out of analytics.
In this article, we’ll discuss how streamlining report management can help your business achieve greater heights.
Why Report Management is Crucial
What do you think is the most critical part of exploring your data and transforming it into actionable insights?
Think for a moment.
It’s about being empowered to slice and dice your data anytime without depending on technical resources.
This empowerment can be achieved when you get improved visibility into insights. Analytics reports are important to get greater visibility. But one of the biggest obstacles to getting the best insights is the way these reports are shared. This affects the relevance and value of the data which, in turn, negatively impacts the quality of the insights you can unlock.
Governing the distribution of reports, levels of access to them and to different data sets help in reinforcing their relevance. It also safeguards the use of your data. These factors positively influence the efficiency of your operations and your business performance.
Thus, reports need to be managed in a streamlined manner.
What’s preventing you from efficient reporting?
Generally, business analysts are responsible for setting up and manage reports for every end-user. They decide how often the end-users get updates, and what their level of access is. All the recipients of a report get the report when the “owner” (the business analyst) decides it should be sent. Business users don’t get reports tailored to them.
The involvement of business analysts in managing this process is time-consuming and diverts them away from their core functions. It also means that business users are dependent on analysts to change the report settings.
This is an inefficient chain of events with many bottlenecks. First, the end-users are waiting for report owners to create and distribute reports or make necessary changes. Secondly, these reports are not personalized to suit the requirements of individual users. Relevance takes a backseat as users don’t necessarily get what they need, how they need it, and when they need it. They may either get too much information, too little information; or no relevant information at all. Such reports are useless.
All this leads to a decrease in user adoption and causes a deterioration of decision-making within the business.
Inefficient data workflow is, therefore, preventing you from efficient data reporting.
How can you streamline report management?
Good governance of data and reports can deliver more control and precision to the way end-users get data and insights. Such governance can be achieved when you opt for Managed Analytics-as-a-Service (MAaaS). Such services re-engineer your data using pre-built customized reports.
Once you start using such platforms, your analysts will no longer need to worry about the delivery of the reports. They will be delivered automatically to the dashboard of end-users and tailored for them. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), along with the look and feel, can be customized as per your needs. End users can experience autonomy when going through the analytics data. Last but not least, they can leverage more contextually relevant insights that support their business processes.
In addition to streamlining your reports, Managed Analytics also offers other benefits. Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), self-service BI analytics, and faster time to market are some of them.
Streamline Your Reporting Processes Today
As you can see, data should be handled properly if you want to gain the maximum benefit from it. Taking the burden off your analysts’ shoulders will help them concentrate on important activities. As a C-level executive or business owner, you can use Managed Analytics to take your business to the next level. In case you feel left out in the process, feel free to drop an email us. We’ll be happy to help you.