By Bob Abernethy,
Vice President, Customer & Partner Solutions
Strategy Companion Corp.
According to many 12-step and similar programs designed to help people overcome disabling addictions, the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem. It’s high time for the Business Intelligence (BI) industry to admit to a long-standing problem which even now still continues to plague BI software: most of it is just way too complex for typical business users to learn and use, and too complex even for most IT departments to efficiently deploy and support.
Too many BI projects fail because of ease-of-use issues. It is in the best interests of both end users and IT departments to deploy BI solutions that enable a genuine self-service environment where non-technical end users can create and modify reports and dashboards independently, create their own ad-hoc queries, and perform their own interactive analysis. No one benefits when users are dependent on the IT department.
Creating performance management dashboards and reports needs to be simple and truly intuitive. Let’s look at several features designed to make creating and using BI reports and dashboards almost as easy for your non-technical business users as the ever-popular games on their PCs. And believe it or not, it is almost as fun.
A Great Client for Your Business (Intelligence)
Providing all BI functionality through a 100% zero-footprint browser client makes life a lot easier for both your users and the IT department. IT will not have yet another client-based application to maintain while making sure all users have the correct and updated version of the client software on their machines – and that it is compatible with all their other software, as well as their PC hardware. Report developers, administrators, and end users all should be able to access the complete functionality of the BI solution from anywhere they can access the Internet, without having to go through the IT department in order to find, download, update, learn, and troubleshoot any client software at all.
The only software that should be needed is what the user already has – Internet Explorer. And since the user is already familiar with the IE environment, this helps make the BI solution easy to access and learn. From an IT department perspective, there should be nothing to install or update on anyone’s desktop or laptop – it should be a server-based install, period.
It’s not enough though, to deliver the complete functionality of the BI solution to all types of users through a zero-footprint Internet Explorer client. It’s also important to deliver all that functionality within a single Web browser instance. In other words, let just one Internet Explorer window deliver multiple reports, each with multiple pages, each page containing one or more components such as pivot tables, charts, dashboards, scorecards, embedded Web pages, GIS maps, heat maps and Reporting Services reports. The reason this is important is that we don’t want users to have to deal with multiple browser windows, hunting and searching for the right one with the report they need right now, and awkwardly moving, resizing, and minimizing multiple browser windows. The idea is to create a friendly, familiar, productive, and very easy-to-use environment for all types of users, regardless of their skill levels or their job roles.
Intuitive BI – Easy to Use, Hard to Build
Here’s something else the BI industry needs to come to grips with: the days of users spending days on end trying to learn how to use a new BI application are over. This is especially true when you are attempting to roll your BI application out to a wider group of users than the traditional audience of a few select executives and business analysts.
An intuitive, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG), easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface is essential in enabling users to learn the application quickly, increasing productivity, increasing user satisfaction and adoption rates, while also reducing dependence on IT. The problem is, building BI solutions that are this easy to use is hard to do. It’s not easy to build an application that is easy to use. This is why there are so many complex, hard-to-use BI systems on the market – and also why traditional BI systems have such notoriously high failure rates.
To make it very easy to build reports and dashboards, the BI solution needs to be designed from the get-go for non-technical business users with varying levels of skills. The BI solution should provide an easy-to-learn freestyle layout capability with drag-and-drop functionality which lets users place charts, tables, dashboards, scorecards and other components wherever they want them to be.
Not only is drag-and-drop easy and efficient, but equally important, users are already familiar with it. With freestyle layout, users can move components and adjust their size, color, and more, as easily as playing Solitaire on their PC. It makes no sense to install a BI system which requires users to attend training classes, learn obtuse commands, read hefty manuals, or call the IT department just to figure out how to move a chart from the left corner of the dashboard to the right corner, as just one example of many.
To make accessing the analytics easy, users need clear, easy-to-understand prompts in simple English - or whatever their native language happens to be. Context-sensitive menus can guide the user and simplify the user experience by providing menu choices with 1- or 2-click access to all BI capabilities. Choose and click - that’s all users should need to do. The menus should incorporate a user-friendly design and be free of industry jargon or words and symbols that would confuse or intimidate the typical user.
Looks Matter
The look-and-feel of a BI solution is actually an important part of its overall ease of use – in much the same way that it is “easier” and more enjoyable to watch state-of-the-art HDTV on a large LCD screen than it is to watch the same program on a small black-and-white set. Do the BI reports and dashboards simply look better, more crisp, clean, and professional? Are they visually compelling? Will users be proud to show their reports and dashboards to their bosses or customers? Will people just enjoy working with the BI solution, actually looking forward to trying new things and seeing what kind of results they can achieve? If you can say “yes” to these questions, your BI solution has made big strides in achieving ease-of-use and user satisfaction.
Taking a look at visualization
By themselves, many reports can be pretty gruesome to look at, oftentimes rows upon rows of numbers that quickly begin to look the same. Visualizations of all this data ease comprehension and understanding. These visualizations should be easily created and exist not just outside your pivot tables, but within them as well. To make your BI reports and dashboards truly useful, let users easily create pivot tables containing a wide variety of visualizations, such as data bars, 80/20 indicators, top/bottom performers, color gradients, or various icon sets such as traffic lights. Allow users to create 2D or 3D charts with just two or three clicks. And don’t underestimate the use of color, a most powerful cue which human brains are wired to notice and use naturally.
For instance, green could be used to indicate Finance reports, blue for Sales, and red for Engineering. Color is also useful within reports to indicate years, products, regions, etc. Perhaps you have four pivot tables on one page. Table 2-2006 could be yellow; table 2-2007 could be orange, etc. Hues of a color can also be helpful in making visual recognition easier within similar groups – 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% for example. Make it easy for users to select colors – let them click on the color they want from a palette of colors that opens automatically for them. Users instantly feel comfortable with approaches like these – it’s no different than what they are already used to in emails or Word documents.
Freedom to Explore
It’s also important to recognize yet another reality: users need to have the freedom and flexibility to explore. They need to explore different ways of looking at the data and different ways of presenting the data. So why not make it easy for users to do just that?
Providing a “step list” lets the user go back to see the earlier steps they have taken so that they can review all that’s been done or click to go back to the specific step they want. Given a step list, users will have the freedom and the confidence to try new things knowing they won’t lose the work they have already done, a major fear of the non-technical user.
Stress Relief without Aspirin
With so many reports available and multiple items in each report, users can often feel overwhelmed. Looking through a large collection of folders and files can be very frustrating and stressful. It’s just too hard to find the information needed – or to be sure you’ve found the right information, even when you have.
Allowing users to bookmark their work at any point – creating a saved view without having to create yet another report with yet another name – helps create an easy-to-use environment which builds the user’s confidence in their BI abilities. They should also be able to designate whether they want others to be able to access the saved view or if it will be just for their own use.
Allowing users to create as many bookmarks as needed reduces stress because now they know they can quickly and easily get back at any time to any bookmarked view with a simple click.
For example, different views such as Sales by Region, Sales by Date, Sales by Representative, and Sales by Product type could all be saved as bookmarks within a single report. This makes it extremely easy for users to later find, open, and navigate among these different views with a single click.
Less is More
Once a user (or organization) has built up a collection of reports and dashboards, how can they best organize them? Again, take advantage of the tried and true – and what users are already familiar with. Just like they use in Microsoft Office every day, let them organize their growing collection of reports and dashboards with clearly labeled folders and sub-folders.
Meanwhile, provide users access to only the reports they need. This is important both from a security perspective and an ease-of-use perspective. Users should not be required – or allowed - to wade through lists of reports they don’t need. For instance, no one in Finance needs to get into “Sales by Representative” reports and no one in Sales needs “Equipment Depreciation” dashboards.
Once you have limited what a user can see to what they need to see, provide a Search function for them to make it even easier to find exactly the report or dashboard they need, exactly when they need it. You want your users spending their time working with their BI reports and dashboards, not looking for them.
It’s also important to make sure the solution shows the right data to those who are authorized to open a particular report or dashboard. For example, the West Region sales manager should only see West Region sales data, and the East Region sales manager should only see East Region sales data, even though both are authorized to see the same reports and dashboards.
IT Matters
Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that the term “ease of use” applies only to end users, or that it is important only for end users. As stated earlier, most IT projects fail because of ease of use issues, and many of these involve the IT department. Most BI systems are simply too complex to install, deploy, manage, modify, secure, support, and scale successfully. Trying to deploy most BI systems in multiple kinds of environments, for example, can prove to be a nightmare – if it’s even possible at all. A well-designed BI solution should take less than an hour for the IT department to install. It should provide a choice of deployment options – zero-footprint browser, SharePoint portals, or even be embedded within other existing applications.
Another reality the BI industry needs to face up to is that BI applications need frequent updating to keep up with new requirements. It should be easy to modify reports and dashboards. It should not be necessary to hire an army of expensive consultants in order to modify the application. The same goes for expanding the solution – either in terms of the number of users or the amount of data. In a word: scalability. If your deployment is successful you will need to scale. You need to make sure from the beginning that you will be able to do this – in other words, that success does not lead to failure. And you need to be able to secure your reports, dashboards, and data in a way that supports your organizational structure, different kinds of users, and the ongoing growth and success of the project.
If a BI application falls in the forest…
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? If you
build or buy a BI application which no one uses, do you really have a BI solution?
As we have discussed, creating a BI solution which is easy to use from both the end user and IT perspectives is no minor undertaking. Nor does it come about as the result of just a few key features. It’s the result of carefully taking into consideration many different facets or aspects of both the end user and IT experiences, and then combining them successfully into a single solution. Some of these end user and IT considerations are major and some are minor – but they all matter and all add up to that oh-so important and elusive quality: “ease of use”.
If you can achieve this, if your BI solution is truly intuitive and easy to use for different types of end users and also easy for your IT staff to install, deploy, manage, modify, secure, support, and scale, you are well on your way toward delivering a successful solution. This is the kind of BI solution that will help your company’s decision makers understand current business conditions better and enable them to respond promptly and appropriately in order to attain business objectives.
And that, in the end, is what Business Intelligence is all about.
About the Author:
Bob Abernethy is the Vice President of Customer & Partner Solutions at Strategy Companion Corporation. A veteran of Oracle Corporation and Siebel Systems, Bob brings over twenty years of software industry experience to his discussions with customers about their BI implementations. Most recently, Bob has worked closely with many Fortune 500 and mid-sized companies on the deployment of Strategy Companion’s Analyzer BI solution. Bob received his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University in New York and his Masters of Management Information Systems from West Coast University in Los Angeles.