Quick Solutions: Self Service Reporting
Writing by Jorgen on Monday, 2 of November , 2009 at 11:20 am
IT budgets are down. That’s a fact that nobody can deny. At the same time the need for relevant information has increased considerably. That is another fact. As a result IT is reconsidering its position whilst the business is waiting for the much needed report or analysis. This need for faster time to information and less IT involvement has given rise to something that is often called Business or Self Service Reporting (SSR). Traditionally BI reports are created by the IT department. SSR allows business users to do this for themselves.
This might sound like a radical new way of delivering information but it is nothing new. Gartner for example has always placed the Report writing function in the business part of the BICC. What is different now is that the tools have become more intuitive and easy to work with. Business users, albeit power users, can build their own reports with a relative ease. IT responsibilities for SSR are limited, or should I say focused, on delivering the quality data on time. Which is not bad considering the lower budgets. Another great thing about letting business user build their own reports is that it improves the quality of the requirements (no more misunderstandings) and the setting of priorities (they will probably build what the need the most first). So it really sounds like a win-win situation and often it is just that. But… there is a down side to this as well.
By spreading the report function across various lines of business a dilution of knowledge arises which is often strengthened by the information silos that are created. In a way it is back to the old days with the business (intelligence) silos across the company. Did I hear somebody say: single version of the truth? But the IT department has also a hard time in monitoring the use of the report function and keeping the performance on an acceptable level.
So how can we do something to solve these problems? One way is to make the SSR a little bit more IT monitored by setting up a ‘managed’ self service environment. That is something Microsoft has done. Another solution would be to create an organization structure to support these changes. This would be something like a BICC but more business orientated. Let’s call it a BI Service Center or BISC. A third possibility would be to limit the SSR to a certain kind or reporting. When there is a need for fast time to information or when there is a high need for business involvement SSR is the way to go. All other reports are created in some sort of central function. A hybrid solution can even arise where personal or self service reports become centrally maintained standard reports in time, thus solving the single version challenge.
Self Service Reporting can be a great thing. It will decrease the time to information for many people which is much needed in these roaring times. However SSR must always be implemented and positioned in a way that its benefits will not create concerns for others involved. Always keep the impact of SSR on your information architecture in mind while seeking for quick solutions.
Category: BI Thoughts
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Meneame -
- Digg
Comment by preethe
Made Monday, 2 of November , 2009 at 11:56 am
Preethe: How different is this self service reporting from Adhoc reporting functionlaity given to business users?
Jorgen: Maybe the definition of SSR is just that. The reason for this increase in SSR is that IT is getting much less involved and the products are getting easier to handle by digital natives (business users).
Preethe: The major effort still goes in 1. Extracting and loading the source data (OLTP) in the required granularity and 2. Creating the adhoc reporting metadata ( e.g Universe , Cubes etc ). All that could be saved is the expenditure on the support activities like generating on demand reports. Correct me if I am wrong.
Jorgen: No, you are just about right. But by allowing the end users to build their own reports IT can save money on building (obviously), setting standards, getting business requirements, prioritize request and so on.
That money can spend on IT activities like ETL, Data Quality and Meta data.
Comment by sjoerdjanssen
Made Monday, 2 of November , 2009 at 12:42 pm
Hi Jorgen, Good post. Two small remarks from my side:
- The time to information is only reduced if quality data is available allready. Many organisation use a datawarehouse, maintainted by IT, that provides this data. To be succesfull at SSR, these organisations need to invest in their DWH team. They need to make sure this teem can keep up to speed with the (increasing) data needs from these users. In my experience the complex data integration and architectural issues these DWH teams are dealing with take much more time than the creation of the desired reports (80/20?)
- I think a BICC should be that business oriented anyway, so let’s not introduce yet another term (BISC).
Hi Sjoerd, Thanks for reading my blog.
- I agree with you that the biggest challenge is in delivering the data. By giving the report function to the business IT can concentrate on just that.
- Although a BICC should be a mix of IT and Business it is often positioned within IT (80% of the time?). Therefore I like to call it a BI Service Center to make clear that BI should be a corporate service.
Made Monday, 2 of November , 2009 at 8:18 pm
[…] Business Intelligence Guru Online » Quick Solutions: Self Service Reporting www.biguru-online.com/2009/11/02/quick-solutions-self-service-reporting – view page – cached IT budgets are down. That’s a fact that nobody can deny. At the same time the need for relevant information has increased considerably. That is another fact. As a result IT is reconsidering its… (Read more)IT budgets are down. That’s a fact that nobody can deny. At the same time the need for relevant information has increased considerably. That is another fact. As a result IT is reconsidering its position whilst the business is waiting for the much needed report or analysis. This need for faster time to information and less IT involvement has given rise to something that is often called Business or Self Service Reporting (SSR). (Read less) — From the page […]
Comment by Wouter
Made Tuesday, 3 of November , 2009 at 7:46 am
SSR (or self-service BI) is becoming more important. There are however several pitfalls you describe that need to be tackled. The key is to ‘use’ SSR appropriately. It is not a golden nugget but should be exploited for specific reasons, most notably ad hoc reporting (by its nature, an ad hoc request cannot be reported in a structured way), prototyping, a short time to market (of the required answer) and in small organizations.
DB/M 8-2009 will hosts my article titled ‘Ad hoc reporting reloaded’ which covers these topics and discusses the differences between similar concepts like ‘ad hoc reporting’, ‘workgroup BI’ and ’self service’. Sneak preview: there arent’t.
You must be logged in to post a comment.