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How does an organization help the self-serve advanced analytics model grow and thrive? Responsibility lies in a number of places within the enterprise.
Data Analysts/Data Scientists: If the business is large enough and sophisticated enough to have data analysts or data scientists on its team, those individuals will benefit from self-serve analytics. Because business users can leverage the tools to make better day-to-day decisions and to perform their own analysis, the professional analyst or data scientist will have more time to focus on strategic initiatives and more complex analytical projects. Look to these professionals to monitor the effects of self-serve analytics on their workload, and to identify opportunities to capitalize on power users, and the advent of data popularity within the organization. By encouraging the adoption of these tools and mentoring appropriate business users, the data analyst will contribute to the advancement of these tools within the organization.
Senior Management: As the executive team incorporates analytics into its strategy and business decisions, it will encourage the use of these tools within the organization. When a middle manager or team member understands that the senior management team values analytics and expects to see data-driven decisions, each business unit and department will embrace the use of self-serve advanced analytics.
IT: The IT team can offer encouragement and ensure that business users have insight into the origin and dependability of data by establishing watermarks, labeling and other systems that help users identify the source of data and when and why it was edited or changed by other users. The IT team provides critical support to ensure appropriate data integration from various data sources and to support an environment that allows for dependable performance, mobile access and appropriate data security.
Business Users: The enterprise should identify and encourage power users and those who apply their skills, creativity and knowledge to develop and share reports and to adopt self-serve advanced analytics tools. These team members can become powerful mentors and role models for the organization and can help other team members understand how best to leverage these analytical tools to achieve their goals.
As business users adopt and gain confidence with advanced analytics, power users and data popularity will emerge and the organization will experience a transformation from business users to Citizen Data Scientists and Analytics Translator. Analytics Translators can also introduce efficiencies, productivity and optimization into the organization as natural leaders emerge within the organization and Analytics Translators provide a liaison role between IT, data scientists and business users. These power users can be role models and offer support within business user teams to assure enterprise-wide comfort with analytics tools.
As you can see, the responsibility for growing and capitalizing on the potential of self-serve advanced analytics lies within every aspect of the organization. These tools can offer numerous benefits and the ways the business can leverage the tools are as varied and unique as the organization itself. If the business management team makes the commitment to engrain the analytical philosophy in its organization at every level, it will have the best chance of success.