The Five Styles of Enterprise BI

With enterprise BI and analytics leaders in mind, this article summarizes the main styles of
reporting and analysis to serve as a reference for evolving enterprise BI strategies and
solution portfolios so they effectively address different users and analytics scenarios across
the enterprise.

1
ENTERPRISE BI CONTINUES TO EVOLVE

With roots dating back almost four decades ago, Business Intelligence (BI) software began with a fairly consistent profile
of solution providers and users. Corporate IT was the dominant solution provider. BI insights were powered by data
warehouses and IT-based developers performed all of the heavy lifting associated with data modeling and report
development.

Users, primarily finance and accounting department managers, anxiously awaited their batch reports. Thrilled by these
early insights, the IT teams steering the BI ship could do no wrong. BI infrastructure and programs always costed at least a
million dollars and large enterprises were the only companies who could afford the dedicated staff required to operate
these early versions of business insight software.

Fast-forward twenty years though and we now see that just about everything is different. BI is faster, easier, and there are
far more affordable options. Many sales and marketing have created their own BI programs and new departments are
lining up for similar benefits each year. In some cases, IT isn’t even consulted as self-service, desktop, and cloud solutions
make getting up-and-running as easy as the swipe of a corporate credit card. As a result, we are beginning to see new
working relationships amongst IT and functional leaders who took ownership of BI implementations.

Amidst changing trends, paradigms, and moments of modern BI chaos, today’s enterprise BI and analytics leaders need to
understand the major styles of BI. BI leaders need to know how each style of BI lends itself to supporting key usage
scenarios across the entire enterprise. This eBook overviews five styles of enterprise BI to help readers build a better
enterprise BI strategy including a BI solution portfolio that can successfully execute it.

2
MANAGED REPORTING

Scheduled or on-demand report generation remains the most prevalent analytics use case.
Managed reporting users demand consistent delivery, maximum availability with the freshest
data, and access across desktop browsers, mobile devices, and attachments to emails.

Managed reporting typically begins with heavy upfront data and report design. Providing designers with a robust set of
layout and data formatting options enables faster report development cycles. The most effective report design tools
automatically generate starting points while giving creators the power to achieve very specific visual layouts through
configuration and custom coding options.

Often overlooked during managed reporting product evaluations are features that deliver precise formatting results such
as the appearance or placement of labels, bands, shading, or subtotals. Managed reporting requirements such as flexible
scheduling options, multiple output formats, alerts, and notifications are critical for users with less technical expertise and
those who are always on-the-go.

Example Roles/Department Success Criteria/Key Features

 Process Owners and General  Flexible Report Design
Managers  Intuitive Visualization for Easy
 Operational Performance Owners Understanding
 Operations  Automatic Generation with Scheduled
 Management Delivery
 Multiple Output Options with Mobile Access

3
SELF-SERVICE ANALYSIS & REPORTING

Competitive markets demanding constant vigilance

together with millennials who grew up with the web
have produced a new generation of tech savvy users
who demand levels of agility only offered by self-
service analytics.

Self-service users want access to insights without

waiting or depending on IT so they can make
informed decisions faster. Responsive interfaces are
important to achieving the zero-training
characteristic of true self-service offerings.

Core analysis capabilities include fast, responsive slicing and dicing, drill downs, pivoting, filtering and sorting.
Automatic use of best-fit layouts and auto-aggregations are critical features that help self-service users overcome
challenges in the getting-started phase.

Example Roles/Department Success Criteria/Key Features

 Product or Service Managers  Ease-of-Use
 Finance, Marketing, or Sales Analysts  Self-Service Data Access
 Marketing, Sales, and Finance  Web-Based Tools
 Data Governance

4
DASHBOARDS AND COLLABORATION

Dashboards are a collection of related charts which users and developers can create depending on
the tool. By showing current progress against goals, dashboards help unify small and large teams
in achieving shared business targets. When business success depends on minute-by-minute or
hour-by-hour performance, dashboards may also need to support real-time data integration.

Dashboards should support an array of data visualizations out-of-the-box, providing the richest
portrayal of any given metric. Along with the need for a library of compelling visualizations,
dashboards should enable users to personalize dashboards via custom tabs for different metrics,
save custom widget layouts, set refresh schedules, and predefine filtering and sorting preferences.

Example Roles & Department Example Success Criteria

 Front-line Workers  Customizable Styling & Chart Layouts
 Operational Teams  Real-Time Data Integration
 Department Managers  Collaborative/Social BI Interactions
 Client Service Department  Pricing for Large Number of Users
 Factory Shift, & Store Employees

“In a Capgemini study of senior decision-makers across nine industries and

10 countries, almost half (45%) of respondents consider the current
development cycle for new analytics to be too long & not matching business
requirements.”
Cap Gemini & EMC2, Big & Fast Data: The Rise of Insight-Driven Business

5
DATA DISCOVERY & ADVANCED VISUALIZATION

While many self-service users’ requirements are addressed with prebuilt reports and dashboards,
data discovery and advanced visualization activities are performed by power users and data analysts.
These users often seek breakthrough insights from data sets that they craft on their own. Discovery and
visualization users typically have technical expertise and demand a more hands-on tool allowing custom code.

Data discovery and advanced visualization features available on the market vary widely as does the technical level of the
analyst, developers, and data scientists who practice this style of BI. Certain products present advanced features like
regression analysis as a simple push button capability while others offer integration with R packages to achieve predictive
analytics.

Regardless, the most compelling insights come when analyzing data from multiple sources. Once reserved for architects
and developers, innovations in software technology now enable savvy users to join data from databases, web services, and
local files. However, connecting to different sources is just the beginning; more substantive data discovery and advanced
visualization scenarios require transforming, cleaning, and amending data for successful integration with other sources. To
select the right solution for this usage scenario, BI leaders need to collect details regarding who will perform integration
and analysis tasks, their development skill level, and their target data sources.

Example Roles & Department Example Success Criteria

 Savvy Business Users and Analysts  Robust Data Access
 Business Function Developers  Custom SQL or Script Development
 Sales and Marketing Departments  Data Prep and Alignment
 Strategy and Product Development  Responsive Query Performance

6
EMBEDDED ANALYTICS

More and more organizations are turning to embedded analytics to expedite better actions from BI
insights. Like managed reporting, embedded analytics users are presented with specific insights.
However, embedded analytics differ from opening emailed reports or dedicated
BI tools because they are integrated within application screens to assist users with specific tasks.

Embedded analytics approaches offer deployment advantages since users do not have to install or learn additional tools.
To achieve success, embedded analytics solutions need to provide extensibility so developers can craft and integrate the
right user experience for the given usage context. Since embedded analytics deployments usually support many users or
workers, the solution must effectively scale from a performance and cost perspective. Lastly, companies deploying an
embedded analytics solution usually prefer that they look and feel like they belong within the host application. To this
point, embedded analytics solutions should offer completely customizable branding and appearance.

Example Roles & Department Example Success Criteria

 Task or Process Specialists i.e.  Private labeling and custom styling
customer service agent or payroll  Securely integrates with existing
specialist technology or application
 Custom Application Users  Customizable functionality tailored to
 Customer Support, HR, Sales specific user and usage scenario
 External/Commercial Customers  Easy to upgrade and maintain

7
SUMMARY

Efficiency, revenue growth, and competitive intelligence imperatives will continue to fuel evolution in both BI strategy and
technology. While integrated platforms promising to serve the entire company exist, BI and data management leaders
need to first understand user needs as they relate to evolving BI usage paradigms such as the ones in this eBook.
Knowing the above, BI leaders can successfully map business needs against technologies and refine solution roadmaps.

The five styles of enterprise BI discussed in this eBook serve as a base reference. Factors such as organization size,
industry, or even availability of IT resources play major roles in influencing the need and even the feasibility of each
approach. Regardless, it’s important to characterize BI needs based on their usage contexts while taking into
consideration user skills, availability of time, and required levels of functionality.

Enterprise BI technologies, their costs, and associated ownership responsibilities have changed tremendously over the past
few decades. BI and data management leaders play a critical role in managing an increasingly complex solution portfolio
now owned by multiple departments. While evaluating new BI technologies, enterprise leaders need to differentiate
between the key styles of modern enterprise BI and ensure products align with the both functional and non-functional
requirements associated with targeted BI usage scenarios.

ABOUT JINFONET SOFTWARE

Jinfonet empowers companies to embed the most sophisticated reports and dashboards into 1.240.477.1000
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advanced visualization capabilities with any data source. Every day, JReport delivers insights
for hundreds of thousands of users at over 10,000 installations worldwide. 8

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