Dealing with data is very complex and many companies struggle to take full advantage of their data treasure. In some cases, handling data is more complex and costly than the benefits gained from the information. Dealing with data becomes a liability, a cost factor and does not deliver the competitive advantage it should. The result – many businesses struggle to arrive in the digital age.
The first reason is, that while integrating, visualizing and sharing data, it is common to underestimate the key resource: the human factor. Human-to-Human dialog is often undervalued, where human communication continues to be very important. Miscommunication in data management and business intelligence leads to significant inefficiencies and mistakes. This challenge became even more obvious during the current global pandemic where teams need to collaborate more and more in remote setup utilizing a digital infrastructure.
Modern Collaborative Business Intelligence must be Data-Point-Depended
In times where automation becomes the flavor of the month and machine learning and artificial intelligence are key trends, the data-point-specific human-to-human dialog is essential in delivering any data driven business strategy. Misinterpretation of the information or miscommunication between different parties in any data-point specific dialog can lead to significant mistakes and misjudgment – e.g. a top management team discussing the quarterly results of a company. Misinterpretation of important data-points can lead to strategic mistakes which can result in opportunity cost or negative real cost impact for a company.
During data-specific management or other business conversations common and highly valued communication tools like Zoom, Slack, Microsoft’s Teams or Skype have limitations. What is missing is the possibility to link the conversation to one specific data-point. This data-point-specific conversation would reduce the scope of interpretation.
Standard Data Visualization reduces interpretation mistakes and makes the data-dialog more effective and efficient
One additional gap in many data-related reports is that data is not visualized clear enough. Business Intelligence Tools like PowerBI, Qlik or in the broadest sense Excel are very limited regarding standard visualizations and chart-led data representation. E.g. scaling is not correct and consistent, use of colors is not standardized, title concepts are missing, etc. The most successful data visualization rules are made available by the IBCS Institute. They developed the free International Business Communication Standard (IBCS ®). Implementing such a clear and valuable standard is very difficult using current leading BI tools. Standardization of data analysis does increase clarity and improves data literacy in any company.
Smart API-Strategies offer necessary integration of Communication and Business Intelligence tools
Current communication & collaboration tools and business intelligence and analytics solutions lack integration. The data-specific dialogue must happen where the data sits – within the Business Intelligence tool – and must be data-point specific. If the communication tool is platform independent, it can become the driver for a multi and – if needed – even a cross-platform strategy.
Data Management Process = ‘enterprise-readiness’
Open communication and dialog are important, but Collaborative Business Intelligence also needs to restrict the access to sensitive data. Therefore, it is not so simple to enable a compliant data-point specific human-to-human dialog across teams and hierarchy levels. Internal and external confidentiality and data restriction rules for complex organizations make it necessary to implement a smart security layer, defining access rights and restrictions on an individual or team level/basis.
To improve efficiency and effectiveness, a modern Collaborative Business Intelligence system must be implemented along defined processes and rules which accelerate collaboration processes e.g. via automated notifications.
Especially, in financial reporting it is necessary to record and secure individual inputs and to audit results. This supports compliance in relationship to internal and external stakeholder needs.
TRUECHART is Collaborative Business Intelligence
All three challenges described
- The data-point-specific dialog,
- the standardization of data visualization (via IBCS®)
- and the platform integration and independence
are uniquely delivered by TRUECHART.
We believe that TRUECHART is the only solution which tackles those key challenge on an enterprise level. Data-driven organizations use TRUECHART to implement their Collaborative Business Intelligence Strategy and Program
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