Unlocking Your Financial

Data with User-Driven BI

Five Essential Components for
Successful Business Discovery
An ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA) White Paper
Prepared for Qlik
May 2014

IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING

Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

Table of Contents
Who Holds the Keys to Your Success?............................................................................................... 1
The Rise of Business Discovery..................................................................................................... 1
Business Discovery Drivers........................................................................................................... 2
Impact of User-Driven BI on Your Business...................................................................................... 3
Enabling Finance Teams.................................................................................................................... 3
5 Essential Components for Successful Business Discovery............................................................... 4
Best-of-Breed Selection Criteria Check List....................................................................................... 6
EMA Perspective................................................................................................................................ 7

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

Who Holds the Keys to Your Success?

You dont need to be a mechanic to drive a car. Why should you need to be one to get access to enterprise
data and insight? Since the early days of business intelligence (BI) mechanics or IT professionals have
been the gatekeepers to reports, dashboards and most any data driven business insight. This service
model worked in the early days when business intelligence tools were in the hands of just a few users and
IT was able to serve their needs. As the user community grew and matured more business professionals
have demanded access to data to better understand their business; user-driven business intelligence
solutions have addressed that need.
User-driven BI is designed to empower financial professionals and
analysts with easy to use yet powerful tools that address the challenges
of agility, speed and innovation. These solutions can provide easier access
to data than generally available with more traditional BI systems. This
flexibility helps stakeholders to leverage data and make decisions at the
speed of their business.

User-driven BI is
designed to empower
financial professionals
and analysts with easy to
use yet powerful tools

As data strategies become more streamlined an information supply chain

forms that enables companies to work with information in a variety of ways. Todays financial systems
are creating value throughout the supply chain leveraging information in its raw form or modeled
to drive analysis, visualization, collaboration and storytelling.1 As the data is utilized throughout the
supply chain, companies are positioning information on a variety of platforms purpose built to meet
the needs of the business. User-driven platforms need to be able to work seamlessly across diverse
ecosystems and deploy their insights to a wide variety of consumers on multiple delivery platforms
(cloud, mobile, desktop). When data is managed more strategically, financial professionals are able
to more easily access and leverage data. This data access allows executives to make better and faster
business decisions side-stepping the often laborious task of relying on IT for access to information.
User-driven BI or discovery platforms can enable business users to:
Visualize critical insights in easy to understand yet powerful formats
Interactively explore information to discover critical insights
Work seamlessly across platforms, including mobile devices
Leverage the collective knowledge of their teams through collaborative features
Communicate the findings in a pervasive manner allowing others across the enterprise to leverage
key insights and business driven decisions.

The Rise of Business Discovery

The ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES (EMA) team defines these new diverse
ecosystems in terms of the hybrid data ecosystem (HDE). The EMA HDE is an enabler of innovation
that helps companies move away from the inflexible architecture of traditional BI. Maneuvering data
towards a single platform has proven too inflexible and extremely time consuming. Building a strategy
around matching data types, workloads and platforms is proving to be more valuable to most enterprise
companies. This strategy provides a palette of data solutions that can be employed to meet the needs of
flexibility, agility and to enhance overall insight and innovation.
1

Donald Farmer, 2013

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

Discovery platforms and user-driven BI are an excellent example of these new business intelligence
paradigms. The idea of utilizing the best possible tool or platform for the workload is a key component
to the value and rise of user-driven BI or discovery platforms. Delivering a solution purpose built to
meet the needs of line of business professionals empowers them, speeds time to insight and enables
decisions to be made at the speed of the business.
Discovery platforms are very much a product of necessity in traditional business intelligence
architectures. They address the largest obstacles standing between business leaders and action by
creating an environment of self-service and insight. A discovery platform user poses the tools necessary
to make decisions without relying on IT for critical access and assistance. Purpose built platforms often
deliver custom interfaces and features specifically designed to make adoption of these platforms easier
by the business and are designed for various levels of expertise making it easier for more users to utilize
insights. The rise of discovery platforms is setting a new standard of agility, usability and value for line
of business professionals.

Business Discovery Drivers

There is a set of drivers at work driving this change within the BI landscape. Each driver on its own may
not be the force necessary to make enterprise companies rethink their strategy, but as a combined force
they are nearly impossible to ignore.
Maturing Users and Applications There are clear shifts converging on our analytic and operational
environments. Great demands are being put on traditional systems to support the maturing needs
of end users and to address the creativity required by a new breed of
knowledge worker. User-driven analytics are changing the game and
User-driven analytics are
putting power in the hands of finance professionals and reducing the
load put on IT teams and departments. A more complex analytics
changing the game and
workload coupled with a larger, more diverse population of users is
putting power in the hands
taxing traditional systems beyond their abilities, creating a need for
of finance professionals
more diverse platforms and solutions.
Economics Commodity hardware, low cost storage and memory
are creating an opportunity to address projects that once were beyond the fiscal reach of most
companies. The ability to add new, purpose-built solutions to the data management landscape
is affordable for many and driving a decentralization of the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) in
favor of solutions better suited to specific needs.
Technology Advancements The spirit of Moores law2 is alive and well in the enterprise. The
systems available today eclipse the scale and performance of those we invested in just a few short
years ago. This ongoing improvement arc is fueling our ability to address faster and more complex
analytics. In-memory computing and massively parallel processing (MPP) are now common
technologies deployed to power analytics and applications dependent on data.
Valuable Data Sources For years, we have been forced to ignore various data sources that could
prove valuable to our work processes and analytic insights. These data sources came in structures
and sizes not easily accepted by traditional platforms. The combination of the above drivers now
makes it possible to leverage traditional and new data sources in our projects. New data sources
such as social data, machine generated data and sensor data are all important to powering more
complex analysis of our businesses.
2

Moores Law, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moores_law

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

The combination of these drivers causes IT to look beyond traditional strategies to an array of platforms
that can support the growing needs of their user community. Cloud, discovery platforms, data marts,
enterprise data warehouses, analytic platforms, Hadoop, NoSQL and operational systems are purpose
built to meet these new hurdles and enable innovation. By acknowledging these drivers forwardlooking companies see great value in providing user-driven BI and discovery platforms to finance
executives, especially when their data is spread over a diverse ecosystem of solutions and platforms. As
data grows within the enterprise, it is even more critical for the business to see and leverage all data
that affects its business.

Impact of User-Driven BI on Your Business

Work processes that support decision making come in all shapes and sizes. The one below depicts a
standard process that data professionals have to go through to capture the business insight. In absence of
user-driven BI and/or discovery solutions, users have to rely on the assistance of IT team for all of these
steps. This dependence can cause delays in implementation and added work for business stakeholders
coordinating between the various IT teams. User-driven platforms are uniquely positioned to impact
each of these areas.
User-driven platforms can provide easy
access to better understand the data
available and how it impacts the finance
professionals. Leading platforms avoid
the need for tedious data preparation and
transformation. These two steps generally
account for 60%80% of the time spent
when executing analytic projects. This is
especially true when initial analysis creates
a demand for additional data. User-driven
solutions remove this burden from IT and
empower the business user with an agile
solution that provides insight at the speed
of business and perhaps a competitive
advantage over competition thats forced
to operate in traditional data management
service models.

Enabling Finance Teams

Regardless of industry vertical all corporations rely on their finance group to provide insight, accounting
services and management of the financial foundation that supports and enables the companys strategic
initiatives. Overall corporate health and well-being is supported by the finance function and all other
areas of the business are dependent upon it for success and resources. This reliance on finance isnt a
new challenge, but over the past decade the demands have shifted from a passive consumer relationship
to one that demands much greater insight and performance from the finance group. Line of business
executives have learned to run their business with data and a critical source of this information is
produced and managed by finance.

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

In turn, finance is demanding more from IT to create a consistent stream of data from critical system
to ensure accuracy and the proper speed of response. Innovative financial organizations are empowering
their teams to address these new pressures by utilizing user-driven solutions that support data access
and analytics to help speed response and insight.
As finance serves a greater corporate community they are often challenged to deliver a more standardized
view of the business while incorporating a global view of the companys financial information. Because
the environment has become so dynamic, financial professionals can no longer rely on manual data
wrangling and off-system excel spreadsheets to properly share and distribute data. This is further
exasperated by globally disparate data and diverse accounting practices. In the past financial data
was managed in a silo a model that doesnt support todays progressive demands for insight and
information. Furthermore, as governance and compliance issues grow in importance it is critical for
finance to deliver data in a transparent fashion avoiding offline data sources, private spreadsheets and
other manual processes that can affect accuracy, speed and collaboration.
Leading user-driven platforms are aimed at these challenges and while meeting the new demands
for data, they are also impacting finances ability to be more agile and meet the diverse information
challenges of complex organizations. Projects driven by user-driven platforms are realizing greater return
on investment as they enable faster insights with the ability to be more flexible when utilizing data.
Delivering financial data and insight within the organization is only part
of the challenge for many financial professionals. Large companies are
responsible for consolidating that information and accurately reporting
it to the public. Crossing this finish line every month is a massive
undertaking for companies that lack collaborative, transparent and agile
platforms. Many companies are still struggling with disconnected data,
proprietary systems and costly and inaccurate manual work processes.

Delivering financial data

and insight within the
organization is only part
of the challenge for many
financial professionals.

To move at the speed necessary in todays highly competitive

marketplaces financial professionals need solutions that empower their ability to execute on
accounting, compliance and most importantly maintaining and building the strategic foundation
required for their companys success.

5 Essential Components for Successful Business

Discovery

Empowering finance with faster and deeper insights is an easy value proposition to endorse. Its
important to examine your data management ecosystem to ensure youre well prepared to support
user-driven platforms. Each platform will include features that can automate or assist in executing on
these components. The users view these critical components differently but they illustrate areas where
both play a role in the success of user-driven projects.

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

Finance Challenge

Financial Planning and

Analysis

Business Description

Does your existing

system support your
needs to quickly and
accurately plan and
analyze?

Why its Essential

Utilizing user-driven solutions can enhance a companys ability to execute
quicker, deeper and more insightful financial planning and analysis. Armed
with these capabilities, financial professionals can attain better insights to
business units and make faster decisions.
Integration of multiple general ledgers via user-driven analytics will provide
a clearer and more accurate view of financial information and provide a
better overall platform for forecasting.
Advanced functions such as scenario based analysis, planning and
budgeting can provide a competitive edge and surface information that can
greatly impact the business.
Expense management can have a fast and direct effect on monthly
profitability and is especially impactful within large to enterprise-sized
companies that are managing significantly expense exposure.

Expense Management

Do you have the visibility

into systems and data
to effectively manage
expenses

Being able to identify redundant expenses and other cost savings

opportunities are ideal workload for user-driven solutions. Quick access
to data and user-driven paths to better and faster insight enable finance
professionals to proactively manage expense costs, driving greater profit to
the bottom line.
A greater level of expense management insight allows finance to play a
proactive role in project management through more detailed cost analysis
and better management of margins impacted by poorly managed expenses.
Management of revenue and profitability are affected by many variables
across a company. Better management of these critical facets of the
organization can be driven by innovative and insightful finance professionals
armed with agile user-driven analytic solutions.

Revenue/Profitability
Management

Can you impact margins

and risks with to impact
success?

All too often companies make ill-informed go-to- market decisions based
on poor insights and assumption around market trends, competition and
pricing. User-driven solutions bring data access and detailed discovery
analytics to bear on these challenges enabling companies to avoid risk and
underperformance by delivering the needed insights at the speed of the
business.
These solutions also drive better communication between stakeholders by
providing the necessary information quickly and accurately. Finance is able
to empower the business units to see a more detailed and valuable view of
performance to better manage product portfolios.

Cash Flow and Balance

Sheet Management

Does your present

solution enable you to
operationally manage
cash flow, AR and AP?

User-driven analytics help finance professionals apply current technology

to the traditional challenges of managing AR and AP. Coupling better
access to this data with stronger, more insightful tools empower financial
professionals to reduce aged accounts receivables and improve cash flow.
User-driven analytics help the finance group to impact liquidity and cash
reserves for the company resulting in a more agile business environment
and a stronger corporate foundation.
Identifying processes that cause or run contrary to corporate compliance
and risk models is a critical task for finance professionals. Reducing or
eliminating fines, penalties, risk and fraud create immediate and long-lasting
return on investment.

Compliance and Risk

Management

Can you get to the

root of compliance and
regulatory issues while
aligning to business
strategies?

User-driven BI platforms can integrate the disparate data from within the
enterprise along with third party information to better identify and manage
these risks. By creating a comprehensive view internal controls and policies
can be executed and enhanced.
Beyond managing these issues lies the challenge of delivering
transparency. A clear view of regulatory and compliance data enables
innovative companies to save time, money and reputation when faced
with investigations and inquires. User-driven platforms enable this level of
execution.

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

Best-of-Breed Selection Criteria Check List

EMA utilizes a set of standards within its business intelligence continuum to identify common traits
and best of breed functionality for various solutions. In the case of user-driven solutions a focus on data
acquisition, data management, business analytics and knowledge delivery are critical.

In the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum, the initial level is data acquisition. Best of breed, userdriven platforms depend on strong and accurate data acquisition. These functions are generally built
into the platform or achieved via a partner technology.
Data access functionality must be easily administered.
Multiple data source integration is critical for better insight and user-driven interaction.
Highly configurable security features are especially important for platforms that share insights and
feature collaborative functionality.
After data acquisition, user-driven platforms need to manage the data from an organizations source
systems. Data management can include the following data governance disciplines:
Data quality and cleansing to maintain standard organizational standards.
Metadata management for consistency with data definitions within an organization for areas such
as product, customer and analytical measurements.
Data retention and archive to maintain the appropriate level of information within a business
intelligence platform for the domain of analysis of the platforms mission.
With data ingested and properly administered from the data acquisition and data management layers
of the EMA Business Intelligence Continuum, a user-driven platform can then perform analysis on the
data to transform it into information.
Best of breed user-driven platforms should deliver simple query
results and more importantly multi-dimensional analysis leveraging
a diverse group of data sources.
Advanced platforms may deliver predictive analytics as well.

The ability to easily

explore data enhances
the discovery process.

The ability to easily explore data enhances the discovery process and
adds value that is critical for user-driven environments.
Knowledge delivery represents the last section of the EMA Business intelligence Continuum thats
applicable to user-driven platforms. When information is generated from the business analytics layer
of a platform, it is critical to communicate this knowledge with a wide audience outside of the users/
operators of the platform.

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Unlocking Your Financial Data with User-Driven BI

User-driven platforms focus on dashboards and can deliver various levels of dynamic access to the
data presented as a graphical interface via web, mobile or client application.
Advanced systems deliver collaborative feature sets that enable users to leverage the knowledge of
their team or company to make faster and better decisions.
Some platforms are also focusing on better ways to communicate or tell the story of their insights
with infographics and advanced delivery methods.

EMA Perspective

User-driven BI and discovery platforms are answering the need to empower the business users within
enterprise-sized companies. Leading platforms have proven equal to the challenge for data acquisition,
data management, business analytics and knowledge delivery. Some are striking a balance between IT
support and control while empowering business users. The ROI of these platforms are easy to calculate
as they are affecting time to value decision cycles with speed and agility,
off-loading work from IT, and providing a competitive advantage to
Sales organizations need
companies that adopt these solutions.

to operate not on the

EMA identifies user-driven discovery platforms as a necessary tool to

speed of their IT teams
enable analytic success within companies of all sizes. In particular, EMA
response
rate, but rather
feels that financial teams benefit from user-driven BI and data discovery
at the pace of imagination
platforms. Financial departments need to operate not at the speed of
their IT teams response rate, but rather at the pace necessary to drive
revenue and manage expenses and support corporate strategies. Waiting
for IT teams should not be an excuse for capitalizing on these opportunities to better manage the
company no matter what type of organization. User-driven BI and data discovery platforms can arm
financial teams with the measurement information that their less agile competitors are incapable of
attaining. This leads to additional opportunity and greater market share.

About Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

Founded in 1996, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) is a leading industry analyst firm that provides deep insight across the full spectrum
of IT and data management technologies. EMA analysts leverage a unique combination of practical experience, insight into industry best
practices, and in-depth knowledge of current and planned vendor solutions to help its clients achieve their goals. Learn more about EMA research,
analysis, and consulting services for enterprise line of business users, IT professionals and IT vendors at www.enterprisemanagement.com or
blogs.enterprisemanagement.com. You can also follow EMA on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
This report in whole or in part may not be duplicated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or retransmitted without prior written permission
of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All opinions and estimates herein constitute our judgement as of this date and are subject to change
without notice. Product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. EMA and
Enterprise Management Associates are trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EMA, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES, and the
mobius symbol are registered trademarks or common-law trademarks of Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.
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