Susan Joly

@e2valpo

May 17, 2015

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 2

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Filling the gap .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Examples of business benefits ................................................................................................................................................. 3

Users to the rescue ..................................................................................................................................................................... 4

Prompt insights for prompt benefits ..................................................................................................................................... 5

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 3

Overview Central to every solid business intelligence (BI) solution is a platform that delivers easy-to-use functionality that meets vast user

needs, along with governance, security, and scalability that enterprises require. Ultimately, it is the voice and testimonial of the

customers who are using a given platform that speak volumes.

The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, conducted annually, was recently published on February 23,

2015. In this research, BI and analytics platform vendors were evaluated based on key customer-survey metrics from 2,083 BI

platform users. The research also highlights marketplace trends, innovations, and forecasts.

This blog series explores elements that are critical to an effective BI solution, and highlights what we believe Pyramid Analytics

offers in this regard. We heard input from our customers about strengths in Pyramid Analytics’ BI Office platform for large-scale,

governed BI related to the following areas:

Enterprise-grade, end-to-end BI platform—for instance, ability to quickly create a vast range of reports and dashboards,

governed data discovery, analysis capabilities, ease of use, platform integration, metadata management

Successful, large-scale, governed BI programs—for instance, versatile range of dashboards, reporting, and analysis

capabilities, mobile BI

Users at ease with practical business gains—for instance, high customer satisfaction, high degree of business benefits

achieved

For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

Filling the gap Results speak louder than words. Whether it’s organizational or company results discussed in a quarterly review with executives,

or quick insights that are provided and talked about on a more frequent and informal basis with leaders and the team, business

benefits are what ultimate success is all about.

In the BI world, vendors that cater to the needs of IT rather than to needs of the user fall short in terms of empowering users to

deliver benefits to the business.

The urgency for fast time to business benefits is called out by Gartner, Inc., in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence

and Analytics Platforms, and reveals a gap:

“Growing business user requirements for ease of use, support for users to conduct complex types of analysis, and a fast time to

business benefits are not being well met by vendors that own the large, IT-centric installed base market share.”*

For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

One of the problems is that users often struggle with products that aren’t intuitive, and that lack the functionality they need to

gather, analyze, and make sense of the data for meaningful results.

Examples of business benefits In the Magic Quadrant, the phrase “business benefits” encompasses the following actions:

Increase revenue

Make better, faster decisions

Deliver customer satisfaction

Reduce IT head count

Reduce business head count

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 4

Reduce external IT costs

Reduce other non-IT costs

Expand types of analysis

Make better insights available to more people

Link key performance indicators (KPIs) to corporate objectives

Monetize data

For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

We believe Pyramid Analytics hits the mark in filling the gap described above. Its agile, easy yet

sophisticated, fully governed, self-service platform—BI Office—has earned high customer-satisfaction

scores. Users have the power and confidence to make and quickly share informed, trustworthy decisions and

insights across a team, organization, and beyond.

BI Office provides functionality and flexibility, in a way that’s accessible to users, so they can tackle top

business problems with numerous opportunities to provide tangible, practical benefits. (For more

information about BI Office’s ease of use, and functionality that includes complex types of analysis, see Win

Applause: Selecting a BI Platform That Offers Functionality and Ease of Use.)

Users to the rescue Users can become “business heroes” in a sense, by providing actionable insights that answer questions, spot trends, and identify

and solve problems. When users understand top goals and objectives that need to be addressed in their organization, they’re in a

great position to use the data they have in order to influence the outcome of these goals, and to help their business achieve a

competitive advantage.

For instance, suppose a reservations organization for a cruise operator wants to:

Reduce pain points for callers who are trying to book a cruise or who just want more information to compare options

Decrease operational costs

Improve operational efficiency

Increase revenue

Nancy, a non-technical business user in the reservations organization, strives to positively affect these goals. She’s able to speedily

and easily gather data and information on the current processes from several data sources. Among Nancy’s many discoveries, she

finds that callers are often on hold for an inordinate length of time. In many cases, call records and call data show that these

callers simply hang up after a certain amount of time. Sales data indicates that sales have been down rather consistently over the

past year. Although there are certainly many possible reasons for this drop in sales revenue, one contributing factor could be

related to the experience potential customers have up front. If this wait time can be reduced, it in turn could reduce the chances

of potential customers forgetting or not having time to call back, or perhaps even looking at an alternative cruise company,

resulting in the loss of a potential sales opportunity.

Nancy digs in, looks at different sets and pivots of metrics, prepares a report, and presents the findings to the director of her

organization, along with specific recommendations related to strategies for improving the wait time and customer experience.

The organization tries out the new processes over a twelve-month period, and results are indeed good. Records indicate a trend in

reduced wait time, customer satisfaction scores are up, caller complaints are down, and sales are trending up overall month over

month. Whatever the particular combination of factors that improved sales, the reduction in wait time can only help matters on

the road to increased sales opportunities and improved customer experience. The director—pleased with the insights and

recommendations that Nancy has shared and the resulting business benefits—puts her in charge of efforts to tackle a series of

challenges, trusting in her ability to come up with data-driven strategies that can help address these challenges.

This is just an example of a scenario in which achievable, fast business benefits are within the reach of users when availability of

the right functionality meets opportunity.

Achieving Business Benefi ts wi th a BI Solut ion 5

Prompt insights for prompt benefits The gap is in clear sight. IT-centric vendors aren’t adequately meeting the requirements of business users for quick time to

tangible business benefits.

With an agile, easy, yet sophisticated, self-service BI platform like BI Office—where users can quickly dive in to help address an

organization’s top goals and challenges—users can feel at ease with the timely insights, business benefits, and improved decision-

making that they deliver.

Keep an eye on the gap, and step up to a winning platform for benefits that speak volumes!

*Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, Rita L. Sallam, Bill Hostmann, Kurt Schlegel, Joao Tapadinhas, Josh Parenteau, Thomas W. Oestreich, 23 February 2015. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.