iCHARTER
Instant ROI | Real Business Intelligence

Changes Afoot in the Business Intelligence World

The traditional method of delivering business intelligence (BI) comprised of IT-controlled access, scheduled reports and hard-coded report templates has given way to a more proactive and instinctive approach. Self-Service Analysis puts control firmly in the hands of the business users, freeing IT resources to concentrate on their own initiatives. Identifying the roles, drivers and resources involved in any BI solution will help in determining if it is truly self-service or merely paying lip service to that end.

Self-Service Analysis seeks to utilize existing data assets to uncover relevant trends, predict movement in the market and provide timely insights. This has never been the domain of IT-centric analysis. IT organizations tend to stick with what they know, which favor report-based BI solutions pushing out information on a schedule. This traditional method doesn’t serve the self-directed business user as they try to address day-to-day challenges with ad hoc analysis in an inexpensive and streamlined way.

Traditional BI | Driven by IT and Centralized

Business users want the freedom to ask relevant questions without interference or reliance on IT, in order to make better decisions faster. However, the traditional BI suite is not conducive to users directly interrogating or interacting with only the information relevant to them. As a result, the users are frustrated by the rigid, centralized report offerings. The traditional model sets hard-coded drill-downs and filters, predefined queries, generic dashboards, and few options for interpretive discovery.

In the traditional BI landscape the IT department’s role is to establish the parameters, control access to data, and build reports. This method frustrates users as they wait for IT to respond to requests, and unduly burdens IT, keeping them from other value laden exercises.

Self Service Analysis Creates Actionable Knowledge

Empowered consumers are bringing their expectations of technology into the workplace. They are voting with their pocketbooks and buying Business Discovery platforms that are quick to deploy, easy and fun to use, and adept at helping them solve business problems.3 Business Discovery platforms deliver rich interactivity, an associative experience, access to relevant data — from anywhere, speed-of-thought analysis, and rapid time to value (see Figure 3). The role of IT organizations in Business Discovery is enabling self-service by assembling and preparing relevant data, helping to validate data, and ensuring security and scalability.

Self-Service Analysis is user-directed business intelligence that helps people make decisions based on multiple sources of insight: data, people, and the environment. With it, users can create and share knowledge and analysis in groups and across organizations. iCHARTER helps users frame and refine their own questions, following their own path to actionable knowledge. It enhances collaboration between teams, and promotes the sharing of discoveries within the organization. iCHARTER delivers:

• Analysis for Everyone. Instead of just a few executives crunching numbers, iCHARTER enables everyone in the organization to resolve issues and make fact-based decisions. Creating actionable intelligence throughout the organization creates tribal knowledge and builds the expectation of sound decisions based on thorough, personal analysis — rather than generic reports that miss the crux of the issue. Its focus is on providing access and tools for individuals and teams to get the answers they need more rapidly and with greater precision.

• Instant ROI. Don’t put up with the pain of deploying and administering unwieldy business applications. iCHARTER installs in less than an hour, at which point all of your information is charted as you currently use it. Provide users of any technical aptitude with the ability to create and refine straightforward, purposeful charts that can be shared, refined and discarded easily.  The new promise of Self-Service Analysis is leveraging your existing people, resources and data assets to quickly develop and deploy contextually appropriate business intelligence across the organization for one set price.
• Scalability and Agility. You can’t predict what questions you’ll need to ask in the future, but you can prepare for them by approaching business intelligence from the right vantage point. The traditional BI model required IT resources to build, design and maintain your world of analysis, creating a back log for even the most time sensitive inquiries. With iCHARTER, it is the users themselves that reformulate their questions and hypotheses, mixing in new data elements as they become relevant to the discussion, sharing insights on their own, and creating new visuals for clearer understanding.
• A Collaborative Exercise. Discovery shared is far more valuable to your organization that passive acceptance of this is how we have always done it.  The trampoline effect can occur only when minor breakthroughs lead to huge discoveries that can change your market. iCHARTER’s value centers on the shared experience of business users, the people engage in tactical decision-making. As they are liberated to move towards better decisions, without waiting for permission, the business grows and decision process cycles get shorter.

Give us 10 minutes to show you how easy and powerful Self-Service Analysis can be.