Starting with the release of Strategy ONE (March 2024), dossiers are also known as dashboards.
Driving the adoption of new or updated analytics can be difficult. There is something inherently scary about change, but more so when it relates to changes in the analytics needed to make important daily business decisions. I have worked with enterprise applications and analytics for over a decade and have encountered many of the same concerns time and time again.
Although there will always be concerns, there are some things which can be done to ease the hesitation and drive up the adoption rate of your analytics. I’ve outlined 3 of the more common issues and concerns I’ve encountered over the years and how to overcome them with Strategy.
Get the Data Right!
One of the first things users will check is to see if the data is correct. If users find unexpected results, it will be difficult to gain back their confidence. Luckily, Strategy is built on an object-oriented schematic layer. This means that rather than requiring the validation of each ad hoc query, the Schematic layer is designed once and used throughout your analytics applications!
Imagine a scenario where you have hundreds of fact and dimension tables in a data warehouse, all with a key “date” identifier. Using Strategy, you can define a single “date” attribute once and even allow for the attribute to auto recognize any new “date” keys added in the future. This goes a long way to “get the data right.”
Users also have the ability to import external data sets and run reports from those. But how can everyone be sure that the data is right if the data was added from an external source? Well, Strategy has an option to “certify” these analytics. A trusted/authorized member of the team can certify the dataset as correct. An identifying badge icon is added to it to let users know the data has been validated.
Make Accessibility Easy
There are other options which bring the analytics directly to the user. Embedding an analytics Dossier into web pages already within the user workflow is a very simple process. It’s just a matter of taking a link available from an existing Dossier dropdown menu and copying/pasting that code.
More recently, HyperIntelligence has been introduced. HyperIntelligence embeds analytics into existing workflows without needing to change or code anything on the client side! HyperIntelligence is driven by keywords found in web pages and provides a “pop up” style card with contextual analytics to drive day-to-day business decisions. HyperIntelligence cards can also link out to dossiers with a more robust analysis.
Don’t forget about mobile! Nearly anything that a user can do on their desktop is available on an iOS or Android device.
If users can’t get to your analytics easily, they’re not going to use them unless absolutely necessary. There are a lot of options to make accessibility easy. For example, Strategy Library is a landing page which will only show the users what they’re allowed to see. Navigating Library is a breeze too! Library has the common Netflix style navigation with tiles for each of the analytics with swipe/scroll for more.
Welcome Power Users
Users who are tech-savvy usually have strong opinions about the analytics which are available for them. These users typically have great feedback on how to improve the analytics suite with even more direct feedback on how you can make it happen for them. Cultivating these Power Users as advocates for your product is important. Failing to win over these users can drop adoption rates because they are a trusted voice within their respective groups. If these Power Users have concerns, those concerns will most likely make their way down to the typical end users driving down adoption rates.
There are important things which can be done to earn the trust of these Power Users and turn them into advocates for your products. Why not provide these users ad hoc reporting access? That schematic layer I mentioned earlier means that these Power Users can jump right into developing new and powerful analytics. Schema objects are all drag and drop which will let the Power Users execute on existing objects or build derived objects within their dashboards. This will also give the analytics developers more bandwidth, since the Power Users would likely support the customized dashboards of their group.
How about Power Users who are not fans of Strategy? Maybe they prefer Tableau, Power BI, or Qlik? Not a problem! Strategy operates as a common data glossary with federated datasets. This allows Power Users the ability to use their favorite BI tool and connect to the Strategy datasets as the single source of truth. Regardless of the platform used to deliver the custom analytics, the data will be the same.
Driving the adoption of new or updated analytics is a complicated topic with intricate solutions. There isn’t a one-size fits all for every implementation. However, having solutions for common questions and concerns will build user confidence in your products.
A note from the Community team
Want to embed a dossier? Learn how in in the Embedding SDK help.
Explore Strategy Library in this video.
Curious about HyperIntelligence? Find out what all the hype is about in this article.
Learn more about Strategy's open platform that enables you to access trusted Strategy data from the tools you love like Excel, RStudio, and more.
