The Future of Self-service BI: AI-guided BI
“Most definitions of self-serve analytics are both vague and vaguely tautological”
I totally agree with this statement from Benn in Self-serve is a feeling — by Benn Stancil. I’m annoyed when people argue about what is considered self-service and what does not.
So before we delve into self-service BI and its future, let me use a food-serving industry analogy to align us on the definition of self-service in general.
- Is ordering food from a tablet self-service?
- Is buffet self-service?
- Are meal kit delivery services, where people have to cook themselves, self-service?
Would you consider all of these options as self-service? I certainly would.
Self-service means allowing customers to achieve something without requiring assistance from a service provider, while they used to require it in the past.
Self-service can happen in any stage of a process where there are Customers and Service Providers involved. The key benefit of self-service is that it offloads the workload from the service provider to its users. This leads to a reduction in the cost of operations and communication and an improvement in the scalability of the system.