Back to Glossary

Self-Service BI

Looking for a way to take your sales and marketing game to the next level? Look no further than self-serve business intelligence (BI) tools! 

These powerful tools put the power of data analysis right at your fingertips, letting you slice and dice your data like a pro - without any coding skills required. 

Let's take a closer look at what self-service BI is, how it works, and how to choose the perfect tool for your needs.

What is Self-Service BI?

Self-service business intelligence (BI) is a set of tools and technologies that enable non-technical users to access, analyze and visualize data without the need for IT or data analyst support. 

With self-service BI, users can create their own reports, dashboards, and visualizations, and perform ad-hoc queries, allowing them to get insights from data on their own, and at their own pace. This makes it easier for business users to make data-driven decisions and quickly respond to changing business needs.

How does self-service BI work?

Self-serve BI tools give you access to your data through a user-friendly interface that automates data processing and allows you to manipulate your data in real time. These tools might come with drag-and-drop tools for creating reports, dashboards, and graphs for visualizing data, and filters and search tools to help you find specific information.

Behind the interface, self-service BI is usually powered by advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms with teams of engineers keeping it updated and optimized, allowing you to focus on your data instead of on the technical side.

How Self-Service BI Tools Help Businesses

Here are some of the main areas where self-service BI tools can help your business:

Faster access to data

Self-service BI allows you to quickly access data without having to rely on IT experts or data scientists. That way, you can access your data and get the insights they need in real-time, without having to wait for reports to be generated.

Self-service BI tools also integrate into your CRM and other business tools, condensing your data and making it faster to access.

Budget-friendly

self-service BI is often more cost-effective than traditional BI solutions, since you can get an “off-the-shelf” solution with a more streamlined design at a fraction of the cost of a custom-made solution.

You don’t need to hire a team of analysts or developers to create and maintain a solution for your data. All you need is your data itself.

Improved data access

Since self-service BI centralizes your data, it gives you a greater ability to access and control it quickly and easily. With it, you can instantly generate reports and interpret data to look for trends without having to wait for a team of analysts to generate visuals.

You can also share any insights from your data easily, contextualizing your data with graphs and charts to flesh out your findings.

Increased ROI

Finally, self-service BI can help you improve your ROI by enabling you to make fast, data-driven decisions. By identifying trends and opportunities in real-time, self-service BI tools enable you to adjust your campaigns and strategies to optimize performance, reduce costs, and increase revenue.

The Best Self-service BI Tools

Here are some of the best self-service BI tools available on the market:

Unleash the Power of Your Data in Seconds
Polymer lets you connect data sources and explore the data in real-time through interactive dashboards.
Try For Free

Polymer Search

Polymer Search allows you to go beyond your spreadsheets, packing powerful features that allow anyone to analyze their data and build dashboards without the help of a data scientist or engineer. 

With Polymer, you can easily track and analyze your data, going from uploading your spreadsheet to generating insights in just 5 minutes. Try it here.

Tableau

Tableau is another popular self-service BI tool with a user-friendly interface and good data visualization capabilities. It allows users to analyze data from multiple sources including spreadsheets, databases, CRMs, and cloud services. Tableau allows users to explore data in real time and generate interactive dashboards to help identify trends and insights.

Power BI

As its name indicates, Power BI is another self-service BI tool that provides users with advanced data analytics and visualization options. It comes with a user-friendly interface that enables users to easily put together custom reports, dashboards, and data visualizations.

Power BI integrates with various data sources, including Excel, Azure, and Google Analytics.

QlikView

QlikView is a self-service BI tool that enables users to analyze data from multiple sources quickly. With a simple interface, users can create custom dashboards and visualizations, and access advanced data analysis tech to explore data relationships and gain better insights.

Looker

Looker is a self-service BI tool that allows users to manipulate their data through custom dashboards, reports, and data visualizations. It integrates with multiple data sources, and uses a unique modeling language made for complex data analysis, making it an excellent choice for marketers who need to analyze large datasets.

Final Thoughts

Self-serve BI can be a powerful tool for marketers and businesses, empowering you to gain better data access and control, make faster decisions, increase your ROI, and improve communication and collaboration.

Related Articles

Browse All Templates

Start using Polymer right now. Free for 7 days.

See for yourself how fast and easy it is to uncover profitable insights hidden in your data. Get started today, free for 7 days.

Try Polymer For Free