Deploying platforms to do this is just one crucial part of BI. Business teams need relevant, timely data to uncover accurate insights. Real, valuable business intelligence is an end-to-end iterative process.
Business users are given the ability to explore their data quickly within the well-considered boundaries that IT or data teams set up. Data teams are still involved in SSBI, but IT teams instead focus on how data is ingested and governed within the organization, and analysts can use their expertise to dig deep into data mining or modeling projects rather than answer ad hoc reporting requests. Instead, SSBI focuses on supporting the end user, allowing business users and analysts to be more involved in their own data analysis. This traditional method allowed IT much more control over data quality, but often meant bottlenecks and resource constraints that would throttle a business’s speed to insight. In this process, business users (sales, finance, and HR, among others) store their data and ask analysts or IT colleagues to query the data to generate performance reports, forecast trends, and more. Traditional BI relied on IT departments to create data analysis processes for business goals. What is the difference between BI and SSBI? This guide will show you what the difference is between more traditional forms of business intelligence and more modern self-service BI, why your organization should consider embracing self-service, and how you can get started. Instead of using gut instinct, precedents, and traditional mindsets, self-service BI helps to create a new culture around using data every day. BI is the strategic process of using data insights to make decisions that help organizations reach their goals. Self-service business intelligence (SSBI) empowers teams such as product developers, sales, finance, marketing, operations, and more to answer data questions, with governance supported by IT and business intelligence (BI) analysts.