Bismart Webinar: Indicators and Dimensions in a Self-service BI Environment

Last Thursday, May 21, our CCO, Victor Rocabert, made a webinar in which he offered a training on indicators and dimensions to work in self-service BI.

You can see the recording of the session in this video (audio in Spanish):

During the webinar, Victor explained, first, the difference between dashboards and self service BI. The first one refers to the dashboards made by the functional department, which tend to be static, and the second one to the environment implemented in an organization that allows each user to make their own reports according to their needs. Although these are different ways of working with BI, the most recent trend is for them to be complementary, that is, to implement a dashboard environment that allows advanced or selected users to have self-service tools to produce their own reports.

Next, basic concepts of business intelligence and the concepts of measurement, indicator and dimension were explained. Victor explained with illustrative examples the value of data analysis through metrics that show what has happened and dimensions that explain why it has happened.

All this translates into a data model that allows us to discern what we want to know and by what we want to analyze it (for example, sales by product, by subsidiary, by time, etc.).

Victor stressed that we must think about who the end users of the tool will be to ensure its success and use. To do this, it is very important to develop an appropriate working methodology and to have a tool that allows it to be carried out. However, the most important thing is to offer follow-up to the users.

At Bismart we have developed a tool for this purpose called Indicators & Dimensions Definition Tool, which provides an environment where indicators and dimensions can be documented in the definition phase. In addition, it has a Bus Matrix, which allows us to know by which dimension we can analyze each indicator or to which indicators each dimension applies. 

This tool accompanies us in the definition process and is also a documentation and consultation tool. It has a section that serves as a dictionary, as well as an indicator card, where we can consult all the attributes that define the indicator. In this section, you can filter the indicators so that you can narrow your search according to the area of interest. The tool also has a dimension sheet where, once again, we can filter the dimensions according to the functional area and also see the hierarchies that form these dimensions. In addition, we can also see where the data shown is obtained from. Finally, the Bus Matrix allows us to see the analysis capabilities, that is, it shows by which dimension we can analyze each indicator and vice versa. For example, we can see that at the product level we have the indicators "success ratio", "number of sales orders" and "number of proposals". 

During the last minutes, a round of questions and doubts of the attendees was carried out during which Victor clarified that this way of working is possible for all types of companies regardless of their size. He also stressed the importance of teamwork when working with this type of tool and finally explained that the tool does not depend on a specific BI environment, but can be used with the one already implemented in the organization.