In July 2011, Gartner released a report โThe Consumerization of BI Drives Greater Adoption.โ Its main focus, the thinking at that time, was that business-intelligence tools were too difficult to use, slow to respond or didnโt deliver relevant content. A key sentence from Gartnerโs press release: โBI users want to be able to just pick up and use the technology โ they don’t want to have to read the manual.โ
Today, Gartner, Gigaom Research, Forrester and others are all focusing on the benefits of self-service BI. Gigaom, in a recent white paper underwritten by Izenda, explored the importance of embedding BI tools inside applications. โReporting and analytics must be embedded inside applications and end-users must be able to use their interfaces not just for running reports, but for designing them,โ analyst George Anadiotis wrote.
Itโs no surprise that end-users, whether digital natives or older consumers weaned on Amazon, Google and Facebook, have high expectations that the applications they use at work are modern, portable and easy-to-use. In a data-driven world, they want to create their own reports, dashboards and visualizations when they want it, where they want it and on whatever device they are using.
Read More