The democratisation of business intelligence

To utilise increasing data flows business intelligence should be shared outside the IT department

While the buzzword ‘big data’ has gone a long way to raising online awareness of the recent exponential growth in consumable data, the traditionally incremental analytic models employed by businesses mean that this surge of information is locked out, available to only IT professionals.

Over the past decade, the hardware used has come a long way in terms power and accessibility but it is the barriers of traditional software implementations that stand in the way of a fully accessible platform.

For too long, business intelligence has been restricted to IT departments, not business users. To harness the power of the huge amounts of data there needs to be not only improvements in analytical capability but in analytical availability.

This is the much-needed democratisation of business intelligence.

When achieved, anyone within the organisation can view the data and make informed, strategic decisions without having to rely on a mediating IT department – in essence, true self-service analytics.

Knowledge transfer is key to achieving this ideal.

Formal training and hands-on migration of skill sets need to be ingrained in the planned personal development of staff to ensure a culture of data-driven decisions is nurtured in every link of the company chain. With this level of analysis, decision makers can confidently draw conclusions knowing the quantitative evidence stems from all areas of the organisation.