Data FOMO is Real
Discover how MicroStrategy + Arria NLG keeps you connected with your data. Co-authored by Nick Sedar of Arria NLG and Alex Rice of MicroStrategy.
From the dawn of the digital age, Semantic Layer Platforms have served enterprises well and grid-style reports were a means to gather, organize, and understand data. IT professionals were essential in developing reports and delivering them to users for review, but before they could even get started, there was an extensive process. Reports, dashboards, and documents alone don’t get the job done anymore.
Now, an information delivery evolution is happening which is exposing the challenges of these legacy applications, including:
· IT dependency that inhibits fast decision-making.
· The complete value of data cannot be extracted — anomalies are often missed.
· A legacy infrastructure results in longer development times; limited support; compatibility issues with modern workflows; and a high learning curve.
· Not user friendly. Information is static and not up to date.
· On premises deployments cause potential security issues.
· Lack of legacy personnel. The BI Industry is predicted to grow from $24 billion (2021) to $43 billion by 2028.
Success in today’s marketplace requires a modern approach to analytics, where reports and dashboards are replaced with interactive business intelligence applications. Empower 100% of your employees to act with the benefit of personalized, targeted insights based on up-to-the-minute information — cue Dossiers. MicroStrategy’s dossiers create an intuitive drag-and-drop authoring experience which is ideal for a more agile delivery. It lowers the learning curve for analytics application development to zero. Companies are converting legacy documents to dossiers, modernizing and automating applications, to effectively alleviate data FOMO. Insights are delivered as needed. And organizations can continue in their journey to be data-driven.
How are MicroStrategy & Arria shaping the future of data consumption?
There’s a sharp contrast in the current global economy — between enterprises that capitalize on their data and those being left behind. What’s the way we think about data modernization? Think, saving time, removing dependencies that hinder agility, and the ability to make smarter, faster decisions. BI adoption and the ability to get accurate information builds something essential to solid decision making: Trust in information. People tend to rely on instinct because they do not have the time to get the facts they need. Only 20% of employees across all industries today have access to the analytics they need to make better decisions, and an even smaller percentage can access those analytics when they need them.
There is a steep learning curve for analytics and too many apps are geared towards data scientists. Open-source systems are notoriously difficult.
This is where seamlessly integrating Arria’s natural language generation (NLG) into a dossier comes into play. By providing easy-to-understand narratives to accompany dossier visuals, data understanding is democratized to improve exploration, analysis, and ultimately action. Developers are no longer required to translate the visuals — dossiers are completely self-service.
Example of Dossier + Arria Reporting
Trust in your data
There is a shift to self-service analytics underway. We have gone from IT control and governance where everyone is forced to consume the same information in the same layout. The data consumer cannot slice and dice data to look at a specific thing; they need to ask the IT team to redefine the report. MicroStrategy Dossier is ideal for providing visual self-service capabilities while maintaining connectivity to governed data so that users can have the independence to explore and visualize data, while ensuring data consistency, security, and integrity. IT still does what they do best: governing and administrating. But your non-experts can now access data autonomously.
Dive into the Information Delivery Evolution
Your BI platform is the fastest way for your users/employees to get insights into what your data means. When the data visualizations are augmented with narratives to explain the data, charts, and graphs — your users gain insights faster and more easily which leads to broader, faster adoption of the platform. This data democratization saves time and frees your organization from dependency on IT.
Real-time data understanding is available anywhere, anytime through a variety of formats. Mobile apps, embedded apps, and custom apps all deliver insights and information when and where they need it. This empowers your users, and especially your decision makers, to understand your data/business with more depth and context, and to make better, faster decisions.
The ROI of moving to dossier information delivery
Return on investment is measured in a variety of ways — for most organizations, the biggest cost saver and fastest way to grow the top line is time savings. When your most critical employees get time back, they do important work that directly impacts business outcomes. Spread that time savings across your entire organization — IT, Data Analytics, from the shop floor to the C Suite — the impact is incredible. Everyone in your organization has access to analytics when they need it — always updated, always on. Decision-making becomes easier, more effective, and faster.
Adding Arria NLG on top of your dossier is a way to go from semi-structured/unstructured — to having all your structured data in multiple layers. NLG allows you to cleanly access the data you need. Instead of trying to recreate presentations that explain what your data means on a PowerPoint slide, the dossier generates the text component in natural language so anyone can understand.
The real question regarding moving to dossier reporting is: what is the cost of not moving?
Example Story: How Arria & MicroStrategy automate the summarization of key vendors to expose risk
- Eliminating the need for manual description, this solution automates the work of an entire team of analysts.
- By migrating a static report to a dossier, the analyst automates the output for executive views putting instantaneous data at the Executive’s fingertips.
- Reports are dynamically updated upon data refresh eliminating the back & forth ad-hoc requests.
Learn how Arria NLG + MicroStrategy can alleviate data FOMO at your organization. Contact Alex Rice at MicroStrategy (alrice@microstrategy.com) or Nick Sedar at Arria (nicholas.sedar@arria.com) for complete details.
