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How to maximise your BI investment through business-wide enablement

By Adam Walker, General Manager and Craig Andrew, Head of BI & Analytics at Keyrus

Johannesburg, 03 Mar 2022

Modern business intelligence (BI) technologies have propelled a surge in demand for a company-wide BI enablement as, for the first time, entire business communities are able to obtain answers from company data via self-service. That empowers them to have meaningful conversations about data, leading to more data-driven business culture. Once people throughout the business have visibility into, and take ownership of, the data, the organisation benefits from speed to insight as well as the ability to make rapid, informed decisions. 

Business-wide enablement

In the past, business people had to direct their questions to database specialists who would have to log into the relevant databases and write queries. This was time-consuming and by the time the answers were available, they were often outdated, or the business user had a new or different question.

The new generation of BI tools is designed to be easy to use and enable all individuals from various departments of the business to ask their own questions, using everyday language. Users do not need to know where the data comes from, as it is curated and prepped by analysts. All data is standardised to look the same, even if it comes from different source systems such as proprietary mainframe software or cloud applications, and is available via a single platform.

Today, companies that had the foresight to invest in modern BI technologies, like Tableau, Qlik and Power BI, realise that users need to be upskilled to get the most out of the data. To maximise their investments into these analytical tools, companies must enable as many of their business professionals as possible to ‘operate’ them and extract the information they need for competent decision-making in their areas of business expertise.

Keyrus as a leading BI and analytics consultancy has responded to this gap in the market by developing a dynamic, interactive training program that is delivering significant benefits for customers. Keyrus believes this training is the best way to ensure business-wide enablement that will amplify the value of any BI investment. Keyrus has developed a customised program to train users from every level and department of the business to ensure they successfully adopt their BI tool and use the data to become more data-driven.

The importance of data governance

In addition to BI enablement training, businesses need rigid data governance for successful BI deployments. Without this, users may spew out invalid data because of multiple versions of the truth, a big downfall for businesses that do not pay enough attention to user training or governance.

The business needs rules to ensure users understand the platform as well as its capabilities, and that they do not create data or replica-type dashboards ad infinitum simply because this is easy to do. Strict rules prevent the business from placing overwhelming strain on the environment and make sure of best practice standards for the way data is presented.

Humanising data

Keyrus experts use their technical know-how to empower clients with strategic, actionable, data-driven insights. Beyond simply understanding data, they use it as a driving force for progress and innovation – a means to a better future.

With more than 10 years of experience, Keyrus makes data matter with a ‘business-to-human’ approach that not only facilitates company growth and innovation but also addresses wider issues around sustainability and positive societal growth. Keyrus refers to this as ‘humanising data’, a key pillar in the way it does business. 

About Keyrus SA

Keyrus is a leading BI and analytics consultancy in South Africa and our experts have been involved in many implementations of Gartner Magic Quadrant leading BI tools. Over the last decade, we have assisted our customers across all industries with their digitalisation and automation journeys, as well as their technology training needs.

Keyrus is a proud Industry Insight sponsor of the ITWeb BI & Analytics Summit 2022, taking place as an in-person event on 8-10 March in Sandton, Johannesburg, and simultaneously online. Two senior Keyrus experts, Adam Walker, General manager, and Craig Andrew, Head of BI & Analytics, will elaborate on the topic of the BI enablement trend during their presentation.

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