BI Platforms- Solving the Paradox of Functionality vs Usability

Is it possible to have a “one size fits all” BI application that appeals to both power users and executive users? It has historically been a catch 22 leaving the executive user in the dark. On one end of the spectrum you have to generalize the application to solve for any problem, and on the other end of the spectrum you need to solve unique problems for individuals. Distilling it down to its purest form, power users (analysts, domain experts, ops people) require robust tools but business users require straight forward applications.

The common approach is to try to dumb down the tool for the business user. But this has never worked- tools adoption within business users has always been low and that isn’t likely to change.

A new approach, with a paradigm shift, is needed – delivering BI as a platform, not just a tool. The elements required of this platform are three-fold
1) A robust set of tools to address the needs of sophisticated power users solving general problems.
2) A frictionless publishing platform for building and improving the unique domain specific apps that these experts produce. Of equal importance, these apps need to be published to “habitual” destinations where end users can consume these applications effortlessly without a behavioral change
3) Built-in “one click” customization in the delivered apps to enable full interactivity for the end-user – with zero programming.

Put simply, the solution is to provide a platform that allows power users to be s/w publishers. The end result is that business users get their unique requirements for BI delivered in a way they can consume it – as a professional application – not as a tool, and not as a report.

The difference between an app and a report is also an important distinction when gauging the value of BI for decision making. Reports are flat, serial and output only. They discourage exploration in all directions. Applications offer a dialogue – they’re fully interactive, they allow for simultaneous and threaded exploration, and they support input as well as output.

As an example of the paradigm shift, let’s explore a mini app built on the Carousel BI platform – Sales Forecast Cockpit. A power user – in this case a sales operations person – creates the application using a simple drag, drop, and connect model from a palette of business components. This specific app provides views of your opportunities by closed, commit, and raw pipeline. Carousel’s built-in right-click customization allows users to change views by rep, by product, by status, or by any of the criteria that an opportunity object allows. The app is fully interactive, supporting input as well as display. For example, you can drill down on the detail of an opportunity and change its status from pipe to commit. The estimated time to build this type of mini-app is 1-2 hours. Sales ops then publishes the app – in this case to a tab in salesforce.com – for the consumers of the app (sales managers). Sales managers have immediate and frictionless access to the product with no behavioral change as salesforce.com is a habitual destination. They can drill down to see detailed information by clicking on a chart, change the slice of data they’re seeing with a single click, and even perform minor enhancements to the product in the field (or iterate back to sales ops to complete the cycle.)

In short, the platform approach addresses the needs of both the power user and the executive masses without compromising either end of the spectrum.