What does a traditional BI set up typically look like in an organisation compared to visualisation?
Undoubtedly it will be all about centralised reporting that comes out of the IT department which takes an age to explain, an age to run, an age to tweak and the user gives up because whatever it was that he or she was concerned about is forgotten, lost in the lengthy to and fro of requests. The slightly improved version of this is that the IT department is savvy enough to be able to pre-empt the questions, shaving some time off initial requests.
I see so many organisations still stuck in this BI timewarp with users frustrated about speed and not being able to get their hands dirty and play with the abundance of data. They want to get to the heart of the issue they are trying to solve. Excel gets heavily used to try and gain the insight they need. A version of an Excel spreadsheet can be forwarded decision-maker to decision-maker over many days for consideration resulting in Excel anarchy with no central control over data. The fact is traditional BI simply does not move fast enough for the modern business.
What does modern BI look like?
Well modern BI puts the user at the heart of the solution and empowers them to ask questions, turn data on its head and collaborate with peers to get insight – quickly. Sounds too good to be true right? But is is happening. Working with a powerful set of tools like QlikView and Qlik Sense gives every end user the access to information that they need to do their day to day job without ever having to touch the IT department. Qlik is built for speed, jumping straight into data, not waiting for reports to be built, ease of use – you can release Qlik solutions across your business with minimal training to help staff get excited and curious and total collaboration to drive faster decision making and better business agility.
From where can it draw its data?
Qlik is product agnostic so even the most disparate network of data sources can be tamed with Qlik solutions. It can work alongside your existing CRM, ERP, Excel, web, bespoke databases with no limitations. If there is data there it can be mapped to draw from it and made available to everyone.
And finally, in five words, how would you sum up modern BI?
Simplifying decisions for everyone, everywhere.
