Dynamics Customers Assess Self-Service BI to Extend Reach, Reduce Burden on IT

If you're an end user trying to get IT to run a report in any of the Microsoft Dynamics products you're familiar with the drill: Ask IT to run the report. Wait for IT to run the report. And wait. And wait. And wait.

And it's not so great on the other side of the fence, either. If you're in the IT department, you typically have to devote precious resources to respond to these requests and, often it ends it turns into a moving target.

Because of these well-known challenges Dynamics partners are investing in developing so-called self-service business intelligence (BI) tools to "untether the end user from BI and untether IT from the end user to make the end user self sufficient," according to Tristan Ziegler, President and CEO, Visual Mining, which recently rolled out NetCharts Performance Dashboards (NCPD), Version 2.1, designed to push ahead the notion of self-service business intelligence and performance management.

"The way we look at self-service BI is placing the information and the power of analysis directly in the hands of the end user," he said. "It's understanding how BI fits directly in the performance management initiative. So, for us it's working with a solution that's designed for the end user regardless of his or her role. You get what you want when you want it and the added benefit is you free up the IT resources."

Ziegler said the problem with an enterprise approach to BI is that users are required to submit their requests to IT for reports, dashboards, and scorecards. Then it takes IT anywhere from 24 hours to three days-and sometimes even a month-to act on the requests.

Marc Holliday, Manager and Business Intelligence Lead ...