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Studies show that only 25% of employees on average use a business intelligence tool to realize measurable value from their data. At the same time, data is being generated at a rapid pace and demand for insights continues to grow - all while end users are unable to access trusted, actionable insights.
Why is this happening? In this article, we explore the challenges preventing users from accessing trusted data insights, how to tackle these challenges with a modern approach to business intelligence, and how Looker makes actionable business intelligence easier than ever.
This article is based on a recent session from the 2023 Cloud Technical Series. Register here to watch on demand!
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and someone from the Community or Google Cloud team will be happy to help.
3 challenges preventing you from realizing measurable value from your data
- In data we can not trust
How many times have you questioned if a report has the latest data or if a metric is correct?
Trust is something that’s earned and people don’t always trust their data. Every time a metric is wrong or a report is out of date, it chips away at people’s trust. Rather than turning to data as a reliable resource for decision making, people will resort to using unreliable predictions, estimations, and gut feelings.
We’ve found that trust in data declines when:
- There is no single source of truth for approved business logic and metrics for everyone to work with, so people use their own logic, creating many versions of the truth
- A data extract that is days or weeks out of date because it’s all someone had is used to create a report and end users get incorrect KPIs and metrics
- And oftentimes, there’s no data available. You can’t trust data will even be there.
Without reliable access to trusted data, you can’t build a solid foundation to ground decision making.
- Dashboard chaos and bottlenecks
How many dashboards exist in your company? Current business intelligence (BI) tools have made it easy to quickly create dashboards, but with no control over if the right data or business logic is being used.
For example, does everyone define “monthly active users” or “repeat customer rate” the same? If users can define the logic easily, it leads to a plethora of ungoverned metrics that reduces trust in BI.
Also, sometimes the dashboard we refer to doesn’t have the right data or metrics needed, so you have to submit a ticket to get a new report created (which may take weeks or even months), and you’re stuck at a dead end. Not to mention, data analysts are burdened with creating ad-hoc reports, rather than tackling strategic business challenges.
- New data experiences are out of reach
Imagine getting a text message on your phone when your store runs low on inventory, rather than having to check a dashboard! Wouldn’t that make your life easier?
People are consistently asking for more information in everything they do, which drives the need for data-driven experiences that go beyond dashboards and visualization tools. We must deliver the right data, to the right person, at the right time, in the right way. And that’s a lot of things to get correct - and must include delivering that data in a way which is easy and intuitive for the end recipient to access at the moment of need.
So how do we tackle these challenges, and help deliver accurate data and insights to the people who need it?
Tackling data challenges with a modern approach to business intelligence
The first step is to focus on the customer (the end user).
We need to move away from the conventional paradigm of BI - a data analyst sitting in front of a laptop, creating dashboards and looking at data visualizations.
We need to recognize that not everyone is comfortable working with a BI tool. Different people in different work environments and roles have different needs. There are many people who need data to do their jobs, but their job isn’t data.
We believe a modern BI solution should deliver insights to people in a way that makes most sense to them, that feels more natural to the way they work and the tools they use. Whether it’s the C-suite or frontline workers.
You might be thinking - sounds great, but how do we make this a reality?
How Looker empowers all users with trusted and actionable business intelligence
Just as Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, Looker enables you to do the same for your business data - creating data experiences that are both intuitive, governed, and connected, built with a data platform that simply and reliably works on any data, on any cloud, on any device, for anyone.
Google Cloud’s vision with Looker at the center of its enterprise data platform offering will allow for an:
- Open ecosystem, because Looker enables customers to bring their data to life, in whichever tool they’re comfortable with
- Unified offering, because we’re bringing together all of Google’s data analysis and governance tools - from Google Sheets to Looker Studio - under one roof
- Intelligent platform, because we seamlessly allow the enrichment of data with AI/ML context and insights to help your end users make better decisions in real-time
Let’s take a closer look at how this works in action.
There are three pillars to summarize how Looker unlocks the power of trusted data for everyone: trusted platform, informed decisions, and data experiences.
Trusted platform
Trust is earned in three ways:
- Queries are made against the freshest available data in the underlying database, as opposed to working off extracts/cubes.
- Your business logic is coded in LookML, Looker’s proprietary data modeling language. Just think of how many ways you’ve seen “repeat purchase rate” defined, or “monthly active user.” Define it in LookML, and every user is leveraging the same metric definition for consistent and reliable insights.
- With Looker, you can control data, content, and feature access. Using user roles, permissions, groups and attributes, you can maintain robust data permissions to ensure a platform that supports your security and compliance obligations.
Informed decisions
Looker enables informed decisions in three primary ways:
- Self-service - empowering every user to access and explore the data they need to make the best possible decision given the fresh information they have available to them. No more delays while you wait for a report from IT, or worrying whether business logic is correct.
- Users shouldn’t be forced to manually check a tool to access the data they need. Looker enables delivery of the trusted data or insights to the user or tool when and where it’s needed.
- Looker’s API-based open architecture allows you to connect other SaaS products and services to modernize existing operational workflows.
Data experiences
One of Looker’s most unique capabilities is as a development platform for embedded analytics, building data products, and immersive data experiences. The Looker platform enables customers to build data experiences that empower users and reduce reliance on your data teams by up to 99%
There are many ways you can embed Looker - in your internal portals, or your data product for customer-facing analytics, within other SaaS products (e.g. Salesforce) - using easy to use iFrames, or with APIs for custom experiences.
Robust API coverage allows you to do just about anything from the UI via API, as well as a rich suite of SDKs that allow you to quickly develop and deploy embedded analytics and data experiences beyond a dashboard. We’ve seen hundreds of organizations creating new revenue streams with premium analytics offerings, or growing their market share by offering strong insights and ROI to their customers through data products built on the Looker platform.
Get started with Looker
We hope this article helped demonstrate why a new approach to BI is needed that enables all users in your organization to get access to the trusted data and insights they need, and how you can do this with Looker, Google’s business intelligence and analytics solution.
If you’re thinking to yourself, I like the sound of all this, but I’m still not sure how to get started. Then I hope you’ll join us for one of our upcoming sessions on June 8th and 22nd for live learning and Q&A sessions that will show you exactly that.
Even if you can’t make it live, sign up, ask your questions in advance, and we’ll send you the recording.
[June 8] Getting started with Looker: From database to dashboard
With walkthrough demos and live Q&A, learn how to go from database to dashboard, and how to use Looker features such as LookML for defining and managing business rules, embedding analytics into your websites or apps, accelerating access to insights with pre-built data templates, and more.
[June 22] Build a data-driven culture with Google Sheets and Looker
With Connected Sheets and Looker, making data-driven decisions has never been easier. In this session, you'll learn what’s possible with Connected Sheets and the use cases it solves for, how to get started with walkthrough demos, and key features that enable you to build a data-driven organization.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and someone from the Community or Google Cloud team will be happy to help!
Lastly, here’s a roundup of some additional resources to help you make the most of Looker in your organization:
- Looker solutions page
- Analyzing and visualizing data in Looker (Course)
- Developing data models with LookML (Course)
- Looker Community
- The Business Application Platform for Data Experiences (Whitepaper)
- Uncovering Insights with Looker (YouTube)
Special thanks to Sudipto Guha, APAC Solutions Lead Data Analytics (@Sudipto) for delivering the original content of this blog during the 2023 Cloud Technical Series.