Build a Reporting and Analytical Insights Strategy

Deliver actionable business insights by creating a business-aligned reporting and analytics strategy.

Analyst perspective

Deliver actionable business insights by creating a business-aligned reporting and analytics strategy.

Self-service capabilities are recognized as the one of the top features that contribute to increased usage and adoption of business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions. Self-service BI tools are becoming prevalent because businesses want more control over their data. This signals a move toward a more federated operating model for the BI team, as well as a focus on customers and service delivery. As a technology and data leader, your success is contingent on your ability to effectively manage the move toward a federated operating model. To support this change, you need to follow human-centered design practices and deliver the outstanding reporting and analytical insights that your customers demand. Your reporting and analytical insights strategy must support the organization’s strategy. Your strategy for reporting and analytical insights provides direction and requirements for data accumulation, augmentation, and consumption. This further paves the way for predictive analytics, market/industry intelligence, and social network analytics. Ruyi Sun Research Analyst, Data & Analytics Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

Executive summary

Info-Tech Insight

Good insights generation should follow human-centered design practices. Understanding the needs and sentiments of all your customers, internal or external, is the key to creating actionable analytics insights. BI teams, whether centralized or federated, must establish and communicate the services they provide, aimed at delivering or supporting outstanding reporting and analytical insights, with their services regularly measured for effectiveness and for driving for continuous improvement.

Organizations that successfully grow their BI capabilities are reaping the rewards

Evidence is piling up: If planned well, BI contributes to the organization’s bottom line.

Source: Unsupervised, 2022

The global business intelligence market is estimated at US$33.3 billion in 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13.16% from 2024 to 2029

(Mordor Intelligence, 2024).

#3 priority for best-in-class companies

Best-in-class organizations differentiate themselves by prioritizing self-service analytics & data discovery, which ranks third in importance for best-in-class organizations, sixth overall, and eighth for laggards (BARC, 2023).

Reporting and analytical insights challenges

Data initiative gaps exist in organizations:

Only 32% of data available to enterprises is put to work. The remaining 68% goes unleveraged (Seagate, 2020).

87% of data science projects never make it into production (VentureBeat, 2019).

Despite ongoing interest in the field of reporting and analytical insights, few organizations manage it well:

67% of employees have access to BI tools, but many aren’t data literate enough to use them. Only 21% of employees are confident in their ability to work with data in the most impactful way (Accenture, 2020).

On average, a company uses 3.8 BI solutions. However, managing multiple BI solutions is a challenge, and 15.4% of respondents didn’t know their organization’s BI adoption rate (Wiiisdom, 2020).

Measure the value of this blueprint

Track the success factors throughout the project to keep stakeholders informed.

Analytics maturity progression

From passive observation to action

There are three key steps to building reporting and analytical insights

1.1 Identify major business use cases

1.2 Aggregate requirements to determine

2.1 Accumulate data from data sources

2.2 Build your master data

3.1 Augment and integrate data

3.2 Package for each major use case

What are operational reporting and self-service analytics?

Operational Reporting

Operational reporting is focused on tracking operational key performance indicators (KPIs) and providing visibility into the day-to day operations of a business. These reports are typically created using data from transactional systems such as CRM software. These reports are typically used by managers and front-line staff who need visibility into how their team or department is performing against key metrics.

Self-Service Analytics

Self-service analytics refers to the capability of individuals, typically within an organization, to independently access and derive meaningful information and insights from data without relying heavily on specialized technical assistance. It is a facet of modern BI that lets users visualize, analyze, and make decisions based on business data without relying on analysts or IT.

Info-Tech Insight

Your insights can come from self-service analytics or a central BI team, but it's also crucial to notice insights that come directly from the application landscape. Enterprise applications like Salesforce or SAP are rich sources of existing reports. Don't waste time and resources on developing reporting that already exists.

Why has self-service BI become prevalent?

Improved Productivity: Self-service BI tools improve productivity by providing easy access to data, intuitive interfaces, and quick analysis capabilities. Employees can work faster, make informed decisions based on real-time data, and reduce dependency on IT or data analysts for reports, leading to improved efficiency.

Faster, More Informed Decision-Making: Self-service BI enables faster, more informed decision-making through real-time data access, trend identification, and collaboration, expanding decision-making beyond limited individuals or departments.

Cost Reduction: Self-service BI reduces costs by minimizing the need for specialized IT or data analyst resources, eliminating the expense of hiring additional staff or relying on external contractors for data analysis tasks.

Increased Agility and Flexibility: Self-service BI enhances agility by enabling quick data access and analysis, facilitating faster responses to market changes. Customization options ensure employees have timely access to relevant data, fostering flexibility and competitive advantage.

Your business customers want more control over their data

This impacts how teams work with each other.

Organizations use citizen data science to democratize data, bridge skill gaps, speed up decisions, cut costs, and foster innovation. Empowering all employees to be data-savvy unlocks data’s full potential for a competitive edge. Traditionally, data tasks required skilled experts – data scientists, analysts, and statisticians. They gathered, cleaned, and analyzed data for insights. But this bottlenecked decision-making due to high demand, causing delays and missed chances. Citizen data science aims to address this limitation by enabling a broader range of individuals, including subject matter experts, business analysts, and other nontechnical professionals, to actively participate in the data analysis process. By providing accessible tools, user-friendly interfaces, and training, organizations can empower employees at all levels to work with data and extract insights relevant to their areas of expertise. By empowering employees at all levels to become data literate and proficient in data analysis, organizations can unlock the full potential of their data and gain a competitive edge in the market.

When BI and self-service analytics initiatives are poorly executed, they can negatively impact organizations

Potential business impacts when BI and self-service are done badly:

1. Inaccurate and unreliable insights: If data quality is compromised or data governance processes are not in place, BI and self-service analytics can result in inaccurate or unreliable insights. Decision-makers may base their actions on flawed information, leading to poor strategic decisions, operational inefficiencies, or misguided resource allocation.
2. Misinterpretation of data: Without proper training or understanding of data analysis techniques, users may misinterpret the data they are working with. This can lead to incorrect conclusions, flawed correlations, or misleading visualizations.
3. Data silos and fragmentation: BI and self-service analytics initiatives may lead to the creation of data silos and fragmented analysis. Different teams or individuals may use different tools, data sets, or methodologies, resulting in inconsistent and disconnected analysis across the organization.
4. Overwhelming complexity: BI tools often provide users with a wide range of capabilities and functionalities. Without proper guidance or training, users may feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the tools or struggle to navigate the vast amount of data available.

To mitigate these potential negative impacts, organizations should invest in proper data governance, establish clear guidelines and training programs for users, ensure data quality and security measures are in place, and promote collaboration and standardization in self-service analytics initiatives. Effective communication, support, and monitoring are key to ensuring that BI and self-service analytics initiatives deliver accurate, reliable, and actionable insights for the organization.

Reporting and analytical insights do not operate in isolation

Challenges exist outside your program. Be aware of their impact and interdependency.

The benefits of your initiatives are not just about technology

Insight summary

Overarching insight

Good insights generation should follow human-centered design practices. Understanding the needs and sentiments of all your customers, internal or external, is the key to creating actionable analytics insights. BI teams, whether centralized or federated, must establish and communicate the services they provide, aimed at delivering or supporting outstanding reporting and analytical insights, with their services regularly measured for effectiveness and for driving for continuous improvement.

Insight 1

A business analyst or business intelligence analyst is typically one of the first hires and the most outward-facing member of the team, acting as a bridge between the BI team and other business stakeholders. A successful BI team necessitates investment in business analysis skills.

Insight 2

The BI operations and services components enable programmatic development of outstanding reporting and analytical insights. These components guide organizations’ plan for success. Without proper setup for stakeholder engagement, performance measurement, etc., the BI program is likely to fail.

Insight 3

Assessing current and target states is only the beginning. The real value comes from the interpretation and analysis of the results. Use visualizations of multiple viewpoints and discuss the results in groups to come up with the most effective ideas for your strategy and roadmap.

Tactical insight

Your insights can come from self-service analytics or a central BI team, but it's also crucial to notice insights that come directly from the application landscape. Enterprise applications like Salesforce or SAP are rich sources of existing reports. Don't waste time and resources on developing reporting that already exists.

Tactical insight

The BI team does not typically own the responsibility for solving problems in data management disciplines, but it's important to understand their interdependence and impact on the BI program. For example, if your data is of poor quality, the reports will not offer valuable insights even if they are well constructed.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

BI User Perception Survey Collect and analyze BI end-user perception and satisfaction.	BI Practice Assessment Tool Evaluate the current and target performance levels for your organization’s BI practice. Populate your Gantt chart to visually represent your key initiative plan.

Key deliverable:

BI Strategy and Roadmap Presentation Template

Present this presentation to ensure the business is aligned with the formulated strategy and roadmap and to generate interest in your BI program.

Info-Tech’s methodology for building a reporting and analytical insights strategy

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.

Guided Implementation

Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.

Workshop

We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.

Consulting

Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options