Guided Self-Service BI: From Curse to Blessing?

Of course, Self-Service BI is neither. The world isn’t black and white. It’s neither the ultimate solution to all problems nor the gateway to doom for data-driven organizations.

What is Self-Service BI?

Self-Service BI means that business units can independently retrieve and analyze data—without constantly needing to ask the Data Team for help. This requires:

• User-friendly tools
• Clean, accessible data

The goal is to enable faster decision-making and promote data literacy within the organization, without compromising governance.

What’s Missing?

One aspect often considered essential—but which I consciously omit—is the independent creation of reports and dashboards by business units. Why?

The Risks of Distributed Report Creation

While business units should be able to analyze data, creating their own reports carries significant risks:

• Introduction of new metrics without standard definitions
• Incorrect combination, segmentation, or aggregation of established metrics

This doesn’t stem from incompetence but from the complexity of the real world. As economist Richard Thaler aptly states:

“We don’t think people are dumb. We think the world is hard.”

Guided Self-Service: The Sweet Spot

Modern BI tools enable stakeholders to:

• Dynamically add dimensions for segmentation.
• Flexibly visualize KPIs in charts.

This eliminates the need to constantly involve the Data Team. I call this Guided Self-Service:

• Stakeholders can dive deeper into the data to better understand KPIs.
• They remain within the boundaries of centrally defined and carefully curated metrics and dimensions.

The Role of Data Marts

The challenge is selecting relevant metrics and dimensions. Ideally, this is based on a well-implemented Data Mart, which:

• Represents entities and business processes from stakeholders’ perspectives.
• Provides a standardized form that ensures consistency and reliability.

Conclusion

Guided Self-Service BI creates a perfect balance between enablement and governance, making data-driven work:

• Effective
• Secure
• Scalable

Thank you for rading.