How to Ensure the Highest User Adoption Rates for your BI Project

70% of all business intelligence projects fail to deliver on

original business objectives according to

Gartner.

This guide will help you minimize the risk of a failed project.

That’s because we understand that implementing a successful BI solution that is adopted company-wide requires the platform to precisely match the needs of different users.

TARGIT helps you understand who those users are and how they work best with business intelligence.

Get to know the

BI User Personas

The Information Consumer

1

Who they might be:

Executives, board members, managers, sales employees, in-house production employees, suppliers, and partners

The typical Information Consumer receives business intelligence

information in the form of reports, analyses, and dashboards that other

members of the organization build for them.

These are then made available through thin or

mobile clients, integration into portals, ERP, or CRM systems for

the Information Consumers to access.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Information Consumer

Chose a platform that enables you to present a simple interface that

the Information Consumer can start

using without training. This persona does not need many formatting options. Always hide

advanced features, as they aren’t needed and risk causing confusion.

Ensure that there is an easy way to navigate

between different dashboards with

options of getting into the underlying details in a single click. Let

them get the answers immediately.

Embed their dashboards and

analyses into other applications so they

don’t need to change their routines to get

access to the information they need.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Information Consumer

Chose a tool that allows you to centrally

manage what members of different

departments and organizational layers

see on startup. Use it to bring attention to what is most important for the team or individual

employees. This creates an agile organization.

Make sure there are options to display data

to employees that might not have access to a computer during

most of their workday, such as large screen

monitors in a production facility.

The Business User

2

Who they might be:

Vice president roles, COOs, CMOs, CFOs, directors, controllers, and sales managers

The Business Users have access to a more feature-rich BI client that allows

more flexibility when needed. That includes occasionally adding new

criteria and setting up alerts in the system to notify the relevant people if

data changes.

Through benchmarking and adjusting information within the analyses, Business Users spots opportunities to follow.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Business User

The Business User wants to feel empowered and needs to know that

he/she can trust the software to support his/her work. Give the

Business User an integrated and dynamic set of dashboards and

analyses that are tightly linked to key decision processes. Allow this

user to navigate seamlessly from an overview into the details. Knowing

exactly what affects results will enable the Business User to adjust

actions as soon as possible. This will give peace of mind.

Make sure that the software is intuitive for these non-IT specialists. They need to have ad-hoc analytical capabilities—such as benchmarking and regressions models—available in a way that is easy to learn and use. When BI isn’t easy, employees often

export data to a decentralized location that they are more

comfortable with (such as Excel spreadsheets). This makes it

impossible to know if employees are working with the most up-to-date

numbers.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Business User

Ensure that the BI software gives enough room for customizing

dashboards and reports, allowing the

Business User to analyze details without

having to contact developers.

Enable the Business User to set up alerts to notify them if a number deviates from the norm

so they don’t have to spend time actively

checking the system.

This eBook can help you map those

measurements out.

The Business Analyst

3

Who they might be:

Business analysts, marketing analysts, business developers, and data scientists

The Business Analyst will usually base most of their information requirements on pre-existing analyses. However, they will more often test new hypotheses about their business by analyzing their data against new data sources to get more insight.

The ability to handle external data outside the data

warehouse as well as internal company data is critical for

these users.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Business Analyst

The Business Analyst is an expert in all facets of the BI

interface. Make sure this user gets the right training

to leverage all the advanced functionality of the BI

software.

Open access to creating ad-hoc data models that

are not part of a centralized data warehouse so the

Business Analyst can test new hypotheses without

requiring IT or consultancy support.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Business Analyst

Make sure the platform allows the Business Analyst

to tap into data sources outside the company so

he/she can understand the external factors that

influence the particular business area. Analytics

should be easily transformed into a narrative trough

PowerPoint or live Storyboards so updates can quickly and easily be shared with decision makers and

team members.

Ensure online communities and tutorials are available

for quick references.

Give the Business Analyst the freedom to add new data sets and perform advanced analytics with a

feature-rich application.

The Information Designer

4

Who they might be:

Information officers, BI managers, and IT

This persona designs reports, analyses, and dashboards for others to consume.

Information Designers have expert training in the

business intelligence software.They have a solid understanding of how to build

dashboards and analyses that support the business and how different visualizations should be used to

present data.

The Information Designer is a master of all facets of the end-user interface.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Information Designer

Find a platform that makes it possible to

create dashboards and reports with

visualizations that are related to particular

roles, are easy to interpret, and draw

attention to the most important data. Great

data visualization directly affects user

adoption.

Make sure the Information Designer

understands the different personas in the

organization to better design analyses and

dashboards that support their daily decision

processes and the ways they prefer to work.

It should be easy to manage users’ access

to data and related dashboards and

analyses.

How the BI platform should accommodate the Information Designer

It should be simple to repurpose reports and analyses so that the

same view can automatically reflect who is using it and in

what context.

Look for a solution with a variety of deployment options that will deliver data in many ways, to

as many people as possible.

Chose a database platform that makes it easy to find qualified resources to support

the back-end technology. Do not limit yourself with a

proprietary database.

A better understanding of each of these personas will help you better design and deploy BI in ways that are easy for each to adopt into their daily business lives.

Get an even deeper knowledge of your BI User Personas with more descriptions, day-in-the-life

examples, and more Best Practice Recommendations this in-depth guide.

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When everyone is in the know, everyone has the courage to act.

www.targit.com