Is business intelligence (BI) a top priority for your organization this year? Then you’re among many organizations where BI is growing in importance—and for good reason. Measuring BI and acting on it is essential to staying competitive and growing the success of your business for years to come.
Making a business intelligence plan can be difficult—particularly if you’re relying on a traditional data access tool to grab data off the IBM i. Or if you’re planning to move some of your workloads onto other platforms or into the cloud but still need the same visibility into your data.
You don’t have to figure it all out on your own. Help is here to plan your BI strategy, no matter where your data is coming from.
[Webinar] Business Intelligence is Changing: Make Your Game Plan >
Our webinar, Business Intelligence is Changing: Make Your Game Plan, laid out three must-haves for your business intelligence plan. At minimum, successful BI must include a way to access data faster, deliver useful information to those who need it, and empower users with secure data access.
1. Access Data Faster
BI needs to be timely so your organization can act on it. Too often, though, traditional data access tools (Query/400, SQL programming, etc.) slow you down. These tools can destroy your game plan before you get very far.
IT departments need a faster way to access data in order to keep the game plan on track.
Make your game plan >
Incorporate a way to access your data faster. For instance, a modern data access tool like Sequel Data Access makes it easy to access IBM i data fast, so no one is left waiting. You’ll have results in a fraction of the time it takes with Query/400.
Or if your data exists on multiple platforms, Insite Analytics makes connecting to and querying your data sources a breeze. IT pros set up the data sources, and business users can turn data into actionable insights on their own. Insite Analytics can pull data from any relational database, so you can have insight into all of your data.
After all, when you can access data faster, your organization can act on it in a timely fashion.
2. Deliver Useful Information to Those Who Need It
Everyone needs data and everyone wants to understand it. However, data itself is not easy to understand. And traditional data access tools make it difficult to turn that data into useful information. It takes too long (and too much manual effort on the part of IT) to give everyone the information they seek.
IT departments need a way to actually deliver useful information.
Make your game plan >
Turn data into useful information and deliver it to those who need it. A modern IBM i data access tool like Sequel will make it a lot easier. For instance, with Sequel’s business intelligence dashboards, data is easy to interpret. Anyone can take a look at information represented visually (in graphs, gauges, or charts) and immediately understand what’s going on. Plus, it’s a snap to give your users data in the format they love most—Microsoft Excel.
For data across multiple platforms, Insite Analytics allows users to create, organize, and share dashboards within Fortra Insite to visualize their data. Graphs, charts, and tables clearly display data and update in real time, so there's no need to repull reports.
When you deliver information that is actually useful to your executives and business users, they’ll be able to use it to make smart decisions.
3. Empower Users with Secure Data Access
True or false?
- Users never change their minds. False—users constantly change their minds.
- IT can always predict the data users will need. False—user needs constantly change.
- User output needs will never change. False—output needs fluctuate frequently, too.
- Users never click into data they shouldn’t see. False—users are generally curious. Don’t let curiosity kill confidentiality.
Empowering users is appealing, but ensuring secure data access is a concern for many organizations. If you give your users access to data, how can you be sure that they won’t see something they shouldn’t?
IT departments need a way to empower users with secure data access.
Make your game plan >
Empower your users with just enough access and never too much. A tool like Sequel can help, by offering you three different levels of security. At a base level, you can take advantage of IBM i authority to keep users out of libraries, folders, and files. Add on Sequel’s database security to keep users from seeing fields. Or, max out your security with Sequel’s advanced security options and block users from data completely.
Or for your data on multiple platforms, Insite Analytics allows IT to connect only the data a department or individual should be able to access. And within departments, users can create and share queries and dashboard elements securely. Business users have flexibility and visual data, and IT can direct users to only the data they need.
Creating a plan for the right level of user empowerment will help you ensure secure data access.
Business Intelligence is Changing: Make Your Game Plan
See Insite Analytics in action with a live, personalized demonstration from one of our experts. Or, if your data is solely on the IBM i, request a trial of Sequel Data Access to start getting insight into your data.
