Susan Joly

@e2valpo

July 1, 2015

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 2

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Share, and share alike................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Importance of collaborative BI ................................................................................................................................................ 3

True, unique collaborative BI and its benefits ..................................................................................................................... 4

Stay tuned for the next post in the series ............................................................................................................................ 4

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 3

Overview Perhaps you’ve thought you’d like to try collaborative BI in your organization or enterprise. Or, maybe you already use some form of it, but have goals to improve in that area. But what really is true collaborative BI, and is it really a big deal? We’ll take a look at the first part of this question, and for the second part, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Share, and share alike As a child, you might have been told “Play nicely together, and make sure you share.” Flash forward. Collaborative BI doesn’t merely involve distributing relevant emails to the group at large, so that everyone can add their thoughts and share data, analytics, or insights. Neither is it about just uploading content such as reports, dashboards, and visualizations to a shared site, and then making them available for commentary in social media. This post describes how true collaborative BI—BI that really stands apart—goes much deeper than that. Pyramid Analytics goes beyond the traditional conception of collaborative BI to provide a holistic, innovative experience. This collaborative experience includes a secure, server-centric architecture and data modeling; shared business logic and content in a governed environment; and content that’s secure yet easily accessible and shareable to users on any device, within a unified framework. First, though, let’s look at the degree to which users see collaborative BI as being “a big deal” in their organization.

Importance of collaborative BI Although collaborative BI might not yet be a long-established initiative in the BI market, BI stakeholders recognize it as being a valuable strategy. In fact, in the 2015 Wisdom of Crowds® Collaborative Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study, from Dresner Advisory Services, 60 to 70 percent of respondents viewed collaborative BI as being “Important” or even “Critical.”

Technologies and initiatives strategic to business intelligence Copyright 2015 -- Dresner Advisory Services

Interestingly enough, those in the study who classified collaborative BI as being “Critical” or “Very Important” were also those who had the most success with acting on insights in a meaningful, valuable way. The direct correlation applies in the opposite direction, too. As the graph below shows, those organizations that experienced less success in actions taken on insights saw collaborative BI as “Somewhat important” or “Not important.”

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 4

Importance of collaborative BI by action on insight Copyright 2015 -- Dresner Advisory Services

For more information, download the free Collaborative Computing and Business Intelligence Market Study. This research on industry trends, business priorities, usage analysis, and vendor rankings can help you decide on approaches to scale collaborative BI to thousands of users.

True, unique collaborative BI and its benefits In the Dresner study, Pyramid Analytics was ranked top leader for collaborative BI. (Download the free report, and see the Pyramid Redefines Collaborative BI: Ranked Top Leader in Dresner Report blog post.) In true, unique collaborative BI, the BI platform itself provides the foundation for bringing together business users and the IT function in an environment that’s self-service yet governed. Part of what makes Pyramid Analytics stand out is that, from the start, its data discovery framework was architected for collaboration, governance, and unification. Here are just a few examples of the resulting benefits:

There’s a server-centric architecture, and no data silos that impede collaboration. Silos separate one user’s data from another, where each person speaks a different language, with potentially vastly different interpretations and meanings. Our BI solution eradicates silos and enables a group (rather than individualized) model. All content is saved on a central server, not on individual desktop machines. A shared language enables collaboration, and a common context to build upon.

Shared business logic, data modeling, and content, across devices. With a governed approach, and data silos eliminated, you can safely share, trust, and collaborate on data and analytics across the enterprise. And with mobile BI, there aren’t collaborative boundaries of physical location or device.

IT and business users work together. A common collaborative scenario involves business users, subject matter experts, or decision makers who work closely with BI developers on content. They give the developers relevant details and context; IT then turns this into a standardized foundation that business users can build upon.

Stay tuned for the next post in the series In this blog post, you’ve seen the value of true collaborative BI, and a few examples of what makes collaborative BI unique in

Pyramid Analytics. In the second post of the series, we’ll look at some core features that collaborative BI needs to offer its users

for true, successful collaboration.