The Myth of Self-Service BI

Wayne
Eckerson

Most BI professionals embrace the notion of "self-service BI" as a way to liberate end users from IT intermediaries and reporting backlogs. Self-service BI gives users direct access to data to create and format their own reports when and how they want. The only problem is that a majority of users don't want this responsibility, and those who do usually create so many reports that performance, storage, and accessibility become serious issues. Today, savvy companies are balancing self-service BI with tailored delivery of reports to optimize user adoption. This presentation will examine the myth of self-service BI and ways to remedy it.

Featured Topics

While TDWI conferences always cover the full spectrum of business intelligence and data warehousing, the conference in Chicago will also include courses throughout the week that broaden your knowledge, skill, and ability in the following areas:

All too frequently, BI practitioners approach business analytics from the perspective of analytic technology. This isn't a surprise, given that most BI practitioners work in information technology departments or come from an IT background. Most business analytics systems (maybe most BI programs) can increase their level of analytic maturity and corresponding business value by looking at analytics from the business analyst's perspective. Throughout the week, this featured topic includes courses that address the basics of analytics, continues to greater depth with courses that cover the "who, why, and how" of analytics, and concludes with courses that look at the specific skills, activities, and challenges of being a business analyst and performing business analysis.

BI is a complex thing of many dimensions-programs, projects, processes, people, technology, and more. It is much easier to spend money on BI than to derive value from it. Those who have achieved the greatest success with and highest value from BI appear to have one thing in common-organizational competency. They recognize that BI is at least as much a human and cultural endeavor as it is one of technology. Attention to core competencies-program management, project management, requirements gathering, development processes, data integration, data and information quality, and information services-creates a strong BI organization and paves the way to a business culture of information, analytics, knowledge, insight, and innovation.

It's all too easy to focus on the tangible side of BI-the dashboards, the OLAP cubes, the databases. Yet deep down, most of us know that it is people who make the tools and technology valuable. The human side of BI has many dimensions-individual, teams, organizations, companies, and cultures. TDWI's Chicago conference offers a full week of courses to help you understand the difficult and elusive dynamics of human interaction in the BI environment. Ensuring that you have the right communication, interaction, and leadership skills goes a long way toward advancing your mission. Targeted courses offered throughout the week cover many aspects of people as a critical BI component, including building better business and IT partnerships, negotiating, developing leadership, and the human side of data integration.

To see a full list of courses offered at the TDWI World Conference in Chicago, visit our Conference-At-A-Glance.

CBIP Credential

The Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CB IP) program is designed for those who have knowledge and experience within a particular specialty and need a respected credential that communicates that expertise to others. This exam-based certification program tests industry knowledge, skills, and experience within five areas of specialization, providing the most meaningful and credible certification available in the industry. TDWI will offer new exam preparation courses as well as testing opportunities at the conference in Chicago. More information on CBIP