How to Manipulate & Work around your Data Visualization?
The concept of data and data warehousing is nothing new; the topic came into light in the early 1990’s and after that the IT sector has witnesses some major changes and developments. The demand of automation is stronger than ever giving rise to business intelligent tools and data visualization services. All major sectors in business are willing to invest in tools and mechanism that would help them make smarter and efficient business decisions.
Self-service in itself is a trend with a somewhat vague definition. In the most general sense, self-service data and BI tasks are those that business users carry out by themselves instead of passing them on to IT for fulfillment.
The entire self-service concept gave the power and freedom to users of the data visualization tools and BI tools. The aim with the tools is to simplify the process and deviate the responsibility towards the non-technical personals; with the notion of user independence and self-sufficiency when it comes to the use of corporate level information, which leads to a decentralization of BI in the organization.
Data Visualization tools saw an upscale when businesses understood the need of managing their data. Today every business is trying to get a complete hold over their data, store it, analyze it and interpret the collected data in the best format.
As Peter Drunker, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation rightly said – “What gets measured gets improved.” Businesses are all about improving and expanding hence measuring becomes an inevitable criterion.
Data visualization sound’s simple, but there was a time when the IT department were flooded with requests as and when managers needs some data. The process was lengthy and time consuming. Moreover, it did not give IT department to concentrate of the pressing issues. With having data visualization tools in picture, the scenario is quite different. Even the non-technical person can easily accumulate his requirements, filter as per their needs and generate required reports. So now you need not rely on the IT department to provide you data.
When we step beyond the definition and look deeper, the data visualization tools and BI services have so much to offer, having many facets. With so much on the table, it can be confusing and overwhelming; but once you get hold and understand the working of the tool- it becomes a piece of cake. It mostly depends on individual’s specific requirements relating to data storage, manipulating the data, creating dashboards and reports as per need.
Looking at an example will give a clearer picture- in a casual BI the user is mostly required to filter and group the data, whereas here a business data analyst will easily be able to integrate local data from multiple sources quickly. Hence, it is the user that define the limit of self-service BI.
As per typical scenario there can be majorly three different users – the casual user with limited skills, the power users that are skilled and the business analysts with most advanced skills to manage the corporate data.
In general cases, the casual users make up roughly 70 percent of all BI users. While the power bi users are 25 percent and remaining, 5 percent are the business analysts. The casual users work around very defined module, they are generally assigned with analysis, creating dynamic reports and dashboards.
When it comes to power users, they can have more flexibility and command over the tools. They can manipulate existing reports and work to find answers within data to business problems. Business analysts are masters with tools and data. They can use self-service to cover tasks like data exploration, modeling and deploying a sandbox environment for special use cases.
The requirements of business users and users working with tools for self-service are extremely diverse and range from data analysis and modification of reports to integration of local data and even to changing semantic models.
The major requirements are categorized as:
Report generations and Dashboards
Using self-service data visualization tools and business intelligence tools enables its users to generate and modify reports. The business users have the power to create their own customized dashboards. Users can choose from the variety of available visual representation as per their data’s requirement; also, they can filter the content as per need to highlight important aspects. This way self-service tools offer higher flexibility in creation of reports and analysis of data.
Creation of Ad Hoc Reports and Dashboards
With having data visualization tools in place, you need not run to IT department with small queries and data requirements. The predefined report templates and dashboards objects give the power to the users, no matter whether you are from technical background or not. Users can easily generate ad hoc reports and dashboards to support other end users or business.
Integration of Local Data
A lot of people get clutched when they come around the word- integration. Data visualization and BI tools have changed this philosophy. Now the users can easily integrate from local private data to the tools without any troubles. Be it excel sheets or any other external source you can easily take the data and add to existing reports or data models. Local data can be used to extend the information delivered by the data warehouse limiting the pressure and workload on data management.
Creating or Modifying of Data Models
With the right tools in your hands, users can create and modify data models independently with ease. Business users act as ‘data modelers’, adapting their semantic model to a business department’s needs without having to rely on IT department. Modeling can take place in a metadata layer, a database or a so-called ‘sandbox’. Each company defines its own data management strategy to determine the best approach to be used while managing data.
All the features offered by BI tools and data visualization tools have given the power in the hands of business owners. It depends on you, how you manipulate and work around your data and make the smarter accurate decisions. If you still have some queries, get in touch with us. SA Technologies is one of the most preferred data visualization consultant in USA and Canada. With experts on your side, you can head(drive) your business in the right direction.