Eric Dayle was pacing up and down his room, deeply engrossed in his thoughts. Tomorrow will mark two years of Eric’s appointment as CIO of his firm Soylent Corp. When Eric had joined the firm he had set a vision and a roadmap to achieve it. As Chief Information Officer, his maiden quest was to make information available to every decision-maker in his organization according to their needs. While the company had made a lot of positive strides in this direction, there has been a lot of praise for Eric and the team for their achievements. But Eric knew he was far from the goal which he had set for himself and the organization.
According to Eric, he had achieved the board room KPIs
- Set up a robust Data Infrastructure
- Set up robust Reporting Layer, tons of dashboards were built to address business users need
- Set up the process and people structure to Support It
But, was he able to:
- Bring in actual change and make the organization a more data-driven decision-making machine?
- Make data available to every decision-maker when and how they need it?
Eric knew these were the metrics that mattered the most and showed real change. Unfortunately, they were far from the truth, thus his anxiety. In a recent survey across the organization, the following figures were found to be appalling for these questions.
- Are the data tools and solutions easy to use?
- Is it easy to find the data which you need?
More than 60% of respondents responded negatively to the above inquiries.
Eric knew while the system in place works for a set of power users but there is a need to do more to recruit business users. He was pondering over the initiatives for recruitment and how to embed BI tools in the daily decision-making routines of his users. Based on his own experience, any change should begin close to a user, which makes migration easier.
All current data platforms focus a lot on data, getting the right data (with proper quality checks and governance models), right analysis, right visualizations. Eric felt he should start from a user, that would give him a better perspective on how to drive the future change and accomplish what he set out for.
When thinking about a user, he noted the following :
Who are the Users?
These are everyone from a board room to a first-line worker, across multiple functions. But they have one thing in common, they strive to make informed decisions. They do not like shooting in the blank.
What are their Needs?
Their needs are dynamic, it would be hard to imagine someone continuously taking a decision based on the same facts again and again. Priorities of decision-makers keep changing, at times as often as every day or every next store ( in the case of first line workers). They need different data points to address those priorities.
Why does data matter to them?
Data-based decisions set them up in the direction of effective decision-making, helping them achieve their goals.
What is the current user behavior?
They want quick and hassle-free access to data. Getting an analysis done by their team on excel, has proven to be the fastest possible way to serve their data needs. A centralized data reporting system causes the lag they can’t afford in their decision-making.
He also noted that users extensively use Microsoft Teams (collaboration software) and most of the decision-making happens to be on it.
Now, a couple of disconnects are very clear to Eric in the user-based vs. data-based approach to BI platforms.
- There is a break of inertia as users have to switch platforms, decision platforms to data platforms. Over a period of time, this leads to exhaustion, and decision-makers stop going to data platforms.
- BI tools must be able to adapt to user needs quickly and if BI tools do not match the pace of business users’ changing needs, these users will no longer be interested in going back to the data platforms.
Eric realized that decision-making is happening on collaboration systems while data resides on a separate BI platform. If data is available on the collaboration platforms, it will provide a big impetus to bring the change which Eric was aiming for. He needed to build a personalized yet scalable platform to serve his business users’ needs and to make them realize that there is a one-stop data platform for them. It would help increase stakeholders’ faith in data platforms (which would serve their needs). Before Eric could lure them to extensively use other advanced dashboards.
Eric had a plan now. To increase the cohesiveness between decision-makers and data, he must bring data closer to them. Serve data to them where they make their decisions i.e on their collaborative platforms (Microsoft Teams).
Beagle is a unique and globally acclaimed tool that serves data to decision-makers on collaborative apps like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google workspace, and Zoom.
How can Beagle help Eric achieve his next milestone and dream of bringing change towards data-based decision making in Soylent Corp:
- Users can simply ask Beagle a question for the data point they need, there is no learning required to use Beagle.
- Beagle uses its AI engine to identify the user requirements and proactively nudge them with the relevant, contextual, and personalized data points
- Beagle’s advanced visualization engine self chooses a set of best possible visual outputs to the users
- Beagle also helps analytics teams build quicker reports, with a zero-code environment (mostly just drag and drop canvases)
Click here and try out Beagle yourself.