Affecto Oyj : The Time for Self-Service Analytics is NOW – But Why?

The business world is evolving faster than ever. Companies grow, money flows, and people get busier and busier. Long gone are the days when work emails, files and software were only accessible at the office. Oh no, today they're on smartphones and laptops, following you everywhere you go.

Not only is the work in your pocket, but also the amount of data available is enormous-and it only keeps increasing. The companies don't only use their internal data to support their business decisions but data from a countless number of external sources.

There are news sites, weather forecasts, social media channels, public reports and databases… The list goes on and on, and these sources keep updating every second providing you with the most recent statistics and information 24/7.

We're living in a world where the demand for real-time and fact-based decisions is getting stronger. In our everyday work, we see many businesses struggling with this problem. By the time they receive the vital information required for strategic decisions, the ship has already sailed away leaving them standing on the shore.

The clients keep requiring better targeting, smarter insights, and more decisions based on the genuine information. The time for guessing is long gone; You need to be able to adapt to the fast-changing business environment and make quick conclusions to find out in which direction to go before it's too late.

The companies that don't take the full benefit out of the data are lacking badly behind. The tools already exist, and if you're not yet using them, your company is among the ones that are lacking behind.

Why should you use self-service analytics?

Let's run a little test. I'm only asking you to answer these three simple questions:

1. Have you ever found yourself thinking: 'We should have done this months ago'?

1. Do you often struggle because you need to wait for a certain report from the IT department?

1. Have you been in a situation where your competitor has suddenly changed the direction and left you wondering: 'Why didn't I realise this before'?

The fact is that your competitors are most likely already using self-service-and benefit from it leaving you to lack behind.

Rather than stuck in silos, data should be an integral part of the business, and users should be able to access it on a daily basis to be able to make decisions on their own. Making data more accessible and easier to handle won't only save time for the data analyst but save precious time and effort for the IT.

We recently discovered how 80 % of the ad hoc work in IT is based on 20 % of the information currently available for the business users. In most companies, the IT organisation is wasting their skills and efforts on queries that could be easily solved by the business users with the help of self-service solutions.

Going self-service would give the IT department time to focus on more useful operations; General data strategies, self-service enablement, master data management, and advanced analytics and modernisation project such as Digitalization or Cloud.

The data is changing. It's bigger than before, there's more of it, and it's more detailed and more meaningful than ever before.

Most important, the data is there - let's make it more accessible and have fun with it!

Our new Self Service Analytics Trend Report is available!

To help you get started, we created a trend report explaining the basics of self-service and providing you with the benefits, the challenges, the recent changes and the future insights of self-service analytics.

This trend report will not only give you reasons why you should start using self-service (SSA) right now but also how to get started with SSA with a few simple steps.

Are you ready to take your business to a whole new level? Download the report now!