Midsize Firms Need Ease of Use in BI

desk with Izenda forms software open on computerCompanies in the midsize market want to invest in business intelligence and analytics solutions, but they can get stuck on cost and not knowing how to approach BI.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) have found it difficult to invest in BI and analytics organizations, according to the “Business and Intelligence Platform Market” report.

Those in the midsize market usually know they “don’t’ have the necessary skills in house, there’s a skills gap in a lot of cases,” said Josh Parenteau, a Gartner research director.

Partneua, speaking at the Gartner BI & Analytics Summit (registration/fee required) this week, said it is important that the BI solution that is adopted is easy to deploy and use.

The mid-sized market, defined as having 100-1,000 employees by Gartner, expects their BI solution to have this ease of use include online tutorials, training, documentation, summits, conferences, “all the things that you would expect from a user enablement, support perspective.”

The BI platform chosen has to provide IT developers with the architecture and infrastructure needed to develop, deploy, and execute the BI solutions. This will help the user make improved business decisions through analysis of the available data.

Midsize business needs a business platform with self-service reporting and querying capabilities, and the ability to modify and create reports on their own.

Businesses that treat their BI and analytics as a project to manage mistakenly think there is an end point for BI. “Once I build a warehouse, once I deploy reporting and dashboarding, then I’m done,” Parenteau said in his talk at the Gartner BI & Analytics Summit. But that’s absolutely not true, he said. Someone needs to manage BI on a day-to-day basis.

Making BI and analytics an ongoing part of the business will give midsize business access to business insights around the clock. Solution features such as visualization can bring data to life and ease use to empower both beginners and experts through this flexible design, Marissa Tejada said in her blog on the Business and Intelligence Platform report.

These users should be trained and encouraged to use the BI and analytics for some quick wins that will change the sentiment for its use right away.

Parenteau said to “start with quick wins, ones that are directly mapped to a business decision, business process.”

Izenda Vision™ is a dynamic framework for advanced visualizations that gives your users the power to display and comprehend their data in completely new ways with the advanced visualizations. It features dynamic visualizations such as Transitions, World Tour, Heat Maps, Trees, Timelines and Sunbursts.

Follow Izenda on social media for the latest on technology and business intelligence: LinkedInOUTLOOKFacebookOUTLOOKTwitterOUTLOOK