What is Collaborative Business Intelligence and Why is it Important?

Collaborative Business Intelligence (also called Social Business Intelligence) is the use of social media tools or collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams combined with BI tools such as Power BI to help improve business decision-making. This takes place by collaboration among various business users and subject matter experts (SMEs) in an organization, focused on reports and dashboards produced by the BI software. Imagine interactive dashboards embedded in a collaborative space.

Social, Web 2.0 and collaboration tools have not only changed the way people communicate with each other, it has also significantly impacted the way we work (Huffpost.com, “Five Ways Social Media Has Forever Changed the Way We Work”). Using social and collaboration tools, organizations can now leverage the wisdom and experience of their entire workforce to solve problems instead of relying on one person or one team. These tools also make it possible for employees at various levels to get data or information which they otherwise would have difficulty accessing. All of this leads to the opportunity to improve organizational decision-making.

Imagine if the information that is generated by the default business intelligence system of a company using the organizational data could be shared easily with the business users and SMEs in different departments and at various levels. Imagine that they can provide their input for improved collective decision-making for the entire organization. This is what Collaborative Business Intelligence achieves and the tools exist today to make it a reality. The benefit behind Collaborative BI is that when teams discuss information created by BI tools collectively, they are more likely to challenge each other’s assumptions, find gaps in reasoning and provide alternative areas of expertise and viewpoints leading to improved data analyses.

The use of collaborative, data-led decision-making is even more important in our new, remote work world and in the current economic environment. For those dealing with supply chain challenges, having inventory and supplier data at your fingertips in crucial. This, combined with the new way of working which consists of more remote work by diverse teams, makes it even more important that organizations embrace Collaborative BI which combines the usage of BI tools with social media and collaboration tools.

Many ways in which Collaborative Business Intelligence can be used

While platforms like Zoom and Slack facilitate remote working and give employees a way to chat about various decisions to be taken in the organization, they do not give professionals a chance to chat about things targeted to particular business reports or data-driven insights. Collaborative Business Intelligence, on the other hand, allows employees to collaborate on information and reports where they reside, which helps with context, trust and organizational visibility. Collaborative Business Intelligence can take the following forms:

Report-centric Discussions: This allows users to have a focused discussion about specific reports and dashboards. For example, they may seek guidance on interpreting the charts and tables they see or ask questions about how the information was derived. The latter is more frequent when dashboard information is new or a new user joins the discussion. It is important for data experts to answer these questions in order to build trust with the discussion participants.
General Discussions: General discussion about an issue can be helped by including multiple reports in the discussion and pointing to those reports for specific insights.
Annotations: Annotations help the BI users to add comments on specific parts of the report based on their area of expertise or ownership. The decision-makers can then analyze these comments collectively to reach a decision based on all the insights of the individual commenters.

Advantages of Collaborative BI

Collaborative BI makes data-driven decision-making democratic and delivers many benefits. Among them are:

Faster and More Informed Decision-Making - It allows business users and subject matter experts, among others, to quickly share information which leads to better cohesive fact-based decision-making.
Employee Satisfaction - It allows employees to share their ideas on key decisions made by the company in a targeted way and allows them to see how a decision was reached based on the conversations and inputs that led to it.
Knowledge Sharing - Collaborative BI makes it easier for diverse groups to share their knowledge with each other as well as with decision-makers which helps in improved performance of the whole company.
Stakeholder Involvement - Collaborative BI allows stakeholders to get involved in a way that is easier and more convenient so they can provide their input in a timely manner.
Security - Modern Collaborative BI tools have security integrated with the offering which means that only those users who have the appropriate permissions can see the shared reports and participate in the discussion.
Audit Trail - Having a record of discussions and insights saved along with the reports makes them available for historical reference (within the limits of configured platform expirations).

Collaborative BI with Microsoft Teams and Power BI

MS Teams is one of the leading platforms which helps organizations succeed in a remote working environment. In addition, it makes it possible to integrate interactive Power BI content in Teams channels. Within my client base, we have:

Embedded dashboards to manage inventory and suppliers across the globe,
Embedded dashboards for continuous gross margin analysis by product, region and sales channel, and
Embedded dashboards to measure the frequency of shipping errors, damages and customer complaints to address the costliest mistakes first.

Conclusion

The usage of data in decision-making by itself may not be enough to drive better decisions. It is when data and insights are available to everyone in the decision-making chain that BI better delivers on its promises. Collaborative BI allows different organizational stakeholders to view information generated by the BI system from their own viewpoint and help in making smarter decisions. Thus, it is a key component in establishing a data-driven organization where insights are available to key people and those key people can easily provide their viewpoint for decision-making.