Self-Service BI

Self-service BI (business intelligence) is a software tool or application that empowers business users to analyze data, visualize insights, and obtain and share information in the form of reports and self-service BI dashboards – without the help of IT.

The goal of self-service BI is to make business users become self-reliant and less dependent on their IT organizations to answer business questions as they arise. In many cases, IT provides these analysis tools and applications to the business. When a business user needs that data and information, they can get it themselves.

There is a massive unmet need for self-service analytics, which has prompted 25 percent of businesses to go around IT and purchase their own BI tools in the hopes of solving their own problems. However, that introduces new governance challenges around security, data quality, and reliability.