As we ease into the New Year, business intelligence (BI) will remain pivotal in accomplishing and monitoring your 2024 goals. Whether it's optimizing manufacturing efficiency, increasing customer retention, or something more straightforward like boosting revenue, reliable business insights facilitate performance.
There lies the issue of user adoption for your BI and the software tools you invest in. If your team struggles to navigate the interface, interact with the dashboards, or operate the reporting features, you won't be able to obtain the insights to achieve enterprise success. From missed sales opportunities to poor operational decisions that leave a costly dent in your bottom line, your 2024 performance begins with self-service BI accessible to ANY user.
That said, the traditional ways of BI must go. Businesses in all industries need to evolve from the siloed, exclusive club of data scientists using their own data analysis applications to something more inclusive and integrative. The cure? Embedded BI that promotes user adoption by supporting your unique workflows and seamlessly running in your specific applications.
Why User Adoption is Important in BI
Like getting users to accept a new software product for your business, user adoption in the context of BI ensures you maximize as much value as possible. Whether it's for sales, marketing, IT management, finance, or operations, more employees leveraging BI means more insights that get applied to the business --- ultimately driving performance.
When user adoption rates are high, the business gets to reap tremendous benefits:
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Increased ROI for your BI and reporting tools
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More accurate and up-to-databases that teams can use for supporting workflows and finding trends, patterns, and opportunities
- Better insights that lead to performance-enhancing decisions
So, what's the best way to drive user adoption for BI in your organization?
Embedded BI: The Key to an Optimal User Experience
Traditionally, companies have separated BI into its own function, led by specialized data teams, and conducted using stand-alone BI tools. This siloed approach came with its fair share of challenges:
- Complex, time-consuming processes: You have to pull tons of data from various sources, format it correctly, and then analyze it manually to extract any value.
- Lacks flexibility: Changing data sources or models in a stand-alone BI tool that adjusts for different user needs or business requirements gets tedious.
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Overwhelming interface: Vast quantities of data and complex reports make it difficult for a standard business user to understand what your data is conveying.
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Limited accessibility: Only data scientists with high technical skills can understand and operate the BI software.
Embedded BI breaks the barriers that come with traditional BI --- allowing ALL business users to utilize and access crucial intelligence that supports their goals. It applies features like:
- Self-service reporting: Intuitive interface with easy-to-use reporting and analysis tools that non-technical business users can leverage
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BI integration into your workflows and tech stack: Ad-hoc reporting when you need it and interactive dashboards that fit seamlessly into your applications
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Robust customization: User-tailored theme, style, and visualization options that make their BI tool their very own
Integrating Embedded BI with Existing Workflows
The foundation of embedded BI is deploying it with existing processes and data systems. For example, you can add dashboards and prediction tools in your customer relationship management (CRM) software to support critical sales decisions or evaluate risk by embedding BI in your insurance claims tracking system. This is the alternative to traditional BI, where you'd pull data from a data warehouse or application into your stand-alone BI platform.
When you take the embedded route, you get easy access to data insights directly in applications employees already use. You also can save time and increase adoption by centralizing everyday workflows and data intelligence into one interface.
Versatile Embedded BI Tools to Meet Changing Business Needs
A business's ability to remain agile to marketplace and technological trends is a key performance indicator regardless of industry. And because embedded BI is highly customizable and fits right into your current applications, you don't need to stress when making changes to your IT infrastructure, product offerings, or business strategy. Insights come directly from your applications --- making it easy to pull intel from new or updated data sources.
Similarly, scaling BI for growing data and user volume is a breeze. Data is already stored in your business applications, so there is no need to worry about adjusting for rising data capacity requirements. Additionally, enrolling new employees is easy since embedded BI does not require a steep learning curve or hefty investments for new hardware or other IT components.
Brandon Boribong
Brandon is a Product Consultant for MESCIUS' Wyn Enterprise platform, where he works on technical demonstrations, support, and blog writing. Brandon graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Information Science and Technology from Temple University and has experience developing websites and apps, as well as client relations as a customer facing liaison. He likes to work on solving complex problems as a team and helping people achieve their goals through the use of technology. When he isn't thinking of problem solving, Brandon enjoys traveling with his wife, and going on scenic nature adventures. Brandon also loves videography and foreign cuisine.
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