Establishing Mobile BI best practices will increase user Adoption

Firstly, I want to thank Actian for the opportunity to contribute to their blog – and especially about Mobile Business Intelligence (BI). At Yellowfin we are passionate about Mobile BI and have made this a huge focus for our current and future development.

So what has Mobile BI and Actian got in common – where’s the overlap? Well actually there’s a lot, but let me explain.

Mobile BI expectations and predications

Gartner has predicted that 53% of organizations will have implemented a Mobile BI initiative by year’s end. That in-itself is an amazing stat – and there’s a ton of additional stats that underpin the current trend towards Mobile BI.

However, in contrast, BARC’s The BI Survey 10 – the world’s largest BI end-user survey – shows that only eight percent of companies using BI software have users who are currently accessing reports from mobile devices.

So if Gartner’s predications are accurate, a whopping 45% of organization’s are in the midst of rolling out Mobile BI right now. That is a huge amount of new activity.

The catch? How do organizations make sure that their Mobile BI projects are successful? Where are the best practices – what have people learnt from earlier initiatives? Luckily Yellowfin and Actian have been there before – together.

Achieving a Successful Mobile BI Rollout: 10 best practices

Yellowfin and our partners Actian reflected on some the great projects we have done together, and what we’ve learnt with our customers..

The result was a Mobile BI best practices Webinar series I co-hosted with Actian’s Jason Leonidas (VP Sales & Services in APAC) and Fred Gallagher (Actian Vectowise General Manager).

We approached this with the belief that a high user adoption rate was the key to success. In achieving this, organizations need to follow 10 best practices:

Fast: Mobile BI must be fast. Users will wait 10 seconds for a dashboard to load in a browser and 2-3 on a mobile device. Check out Vectorwise – with that driving your BI, it’s going to fly!
Device independence: 75% of Mobile BI users access BI from multiple devices (laptop, iPad, phone) – do not lock yourself into a single platform.
Include the smartphone: 66% of potential users prefer a smartphone for accessing BI content on-the-go. Sure tablets are good, but folks prefer the phone.
Fun and easy to use: If people don’t enjoy the experience, they wont use it.
Enable collaboration: Mobile devices are collaborative – make sure your users can collaborate with their peers.
Interactive: Users need the power to explore their data by filtering, sectioning, sorting, searching, drilling down, through or anywhere. Report interactivity is a must.
Secure: Mobile BI deployments need to be secure. With ‘Bring Your Own Device’ happening everywhere, it’s a critical issue for Mobile BI deployments.
Able to support offline mode: Even in today’s Internet age, there will always be moments when you need to analyze your data offline – the perpetually travelling senior executive will know what I mean.
Tailored to the user profile out-of-the-box: Immediate access to prebuilt dashboards and relevant content is a must – it’s all about the user experience.
Consistent: Deliver a consistent user experience – UI and interaction standards mean users will learn to use your deployment quickly.