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Business Intelligence – Why a Long Leash is Not Equal to Freedom

In order to analyse data, Business Intelligence (BI) developers usually include a lot of intelligent logic in the dashboards that they develop. This however could be restricting the freedom to get the answer to ANY question that the end-user might have. As once quoted by Marty Rubin, “a long leash is not freedom.”

dashboard

‘Triggers’, ‘actions’, ‘alternate states’ and ‘show conditions’, among others, are all functions and features of a BI product that provides the developer the ability to implement powerful analytics and problem solving that would otherwise not be possible. Used correctly, they help in delivering dashboards whereby end-users can analyse and investigate data in a user-friendly way.

These same features however can be the long leash that inhibits the freedom the end-user should have in exploring data within dashboards. Taking ‘triggers’ as an example, developers must be careful when to utilise them. Should a ‘trigger’ be used to automatically select a set of data, or should the end-user be free to initiate that selection whenever s/he wants?

Whilst ‘show conditions’ are one way of keeping dashboards clean, they can also present a struggle to the end-user who is using the dashboard. The same point applies to ‘alternate states’ and ‘bookmarks’. These can be an ideal way of saving a common query for a set of data, however if labelled incorrectly, they can also be the maze that the user finds himself in when using a dashboard.

A BI developer can unconsciously think that the experience he has had in constructing dashboards provides him with the ability of having a very good idea of the questions that an end-user might have when using a dashboard. It is important to keep in mind, however, that it will be the end-user who will be using the dashboard day-in day-out to draw analytics based on current workplace requirements.

Instead of making the end-user feel passive and only allow the ability to use the tool as provided, it is important to make the end-user feel free and in control of exploring the different ‘what-if’ scenarios that might come to mind as s/he using the dashboard. Let the dashboard be a helpful tool for the user’s work experience and a source the end-user turns to whenever he wants to learn and explore particular scenarios further. The aim should be to remove the long leash from around the end-user and provide him with the freedom necessary to discover insights.

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