Bodhtree has partnered with Tableau to provide their clients with a compelling alternative solution to traditional BI.Self-service BI offers an environment in which information workers can create and access specific sets of BI reports, queries, and analytics themselves—without IT intervention.

1. Self-Service BI - Empowering business users
Traditional business intelligence (BI) and analytic
models are being disrupted as the balance of power
shifts from IT to the business, according to Gartner,
Inc. The rise of data discovery, access to
multistructured data, data preparation tools and
smart capabilities will further democratize access to
analytics and stress the need for governance. Gartner
predicts that by 2017, most business users and
analysts in organizations will have access to self-
service tools to prepare data for analysis. Last week
when I was going through research reports I found some interesting facts that I would like to share in
this article.
The transformation of Business Intelligence (BI) from an IT-centric, centralized process to a self-
service, decentralized process is clear:
 According to Gartner, “By 2017, most business users and analysts in organizations will have
access to self-service tools to prepare data for analysis”
 Forrester’s top prediction for BI is, “Managed BI Self-Service Will Continue to Close the
Business and Technology Gap.”
 Forbes reported, “Visual data-discovery, an important enabler of end user self-service, will
grow 2.5 x faster than the rest of the market, becoming by 2018 a requirement for all
enterprises.”
What is surprising is the form that self-service BI in the hands of end users will ultimately take.
Traditionally, self-service analytics options were based on Data Discovery tools: search, visualizations,
dashboards, data mashups, etc.
Self-service BI provides an environment in which it is easy to discover, access, and share information,
reports, and analytics. Information workers want to be able to personalize their dashboards or have
automated BI capabilities so that the information becomes actionable for their particular situations. It
must also be in an easy-to-use format and delivered to a device and user interface of their choosing.
The efficacy of discovery tools such as interactive visualizations and dashboards has helped to shift
the focus of self-service BI from numeric representations to graphic images. 2015 will see the natural
progression of this shift from images to data-driven narratives that explicate analytics results. Doing
so requires a greater amount of specificity of visualizations and their settings, as well as the inclusion
of textual accompaniments of analytics results.

2. Self-service BI offers an environment in which information workers can create and access specific sets
of BI reports, queries, and analytics themselves—without IT intervention. This approach extends the
reach and scope of BI applications to address a wider range of business needs and problems. At the
same time, this extension must support the information workers’ need for a personalized and
collaborative decision-making environment. Information workers must become more self-sufficient by
having a BI environment that is more usable and more consumable. It is these two themes—usability
and consumability—that play crucial roles in a fully functioning self-service BI (SS BI) environment.
Self-service BI shifts the emphasis away from the processes required to manage data in a centralized
store and toward a process for finding, accessing and integrating pertinent information as needed.
With self-service BI, decision makers are better able to respond to changes in business conditions
quickly.
As per forester report Tableau Software continues to set the standards for self-service advanced data
visualization. Self-service and intuitive data visualizations go hand in hand, and Tableau has been the
vanguard of advanced data visualization for years. Late last year, Tableau closed a functionality gap
with the introduction of an in-memory engine for data discovery and exploration. The new capability
gives two important options for business users: the ability to load the entire data set into memory and
perform highly responsive data exploration or, if the data set is too big, leave data where it is — in a
relational or multidimensional DBMS — and analyze it with Tableau’s patented and intuitive
VisualSQL. It reminds me our recent Tableau implementation for a leading insurance company where
we helped them eliminate 20% of the legacy reports.
Not all integration tools that expedite the data preparation process accompany Business Intelligence
offerings; there are a number of standalone options as well. However, 2015 will definitely see the
assertion of self-service BI and the gradual receding of centralized, IT department based models.
To know more about our analytics practice and share your data needs email us at
business@bodhtree.com
Source: Business Analytics Solutions, Tableau Data Visualization