• For ambitious salespeople, motivation can wane when sales are down or no one is picking up the phone. Sometimes, extrinsic motivation can revitalize their intrinsic motivation and bring fresh energy to your office.
• By bolstering their intrinsic motivation to succeed with extrinsic motivators like cash, prizes, or bragging rights, gamification helps sales teams conquer boredom, strengthen performance, and bring excitement into their daily tasks.

Motivating your sales employees can feel impossible during a sales slump. Sales teams thrive on performance and progress, so it’s easy for the whole team to get into a rut when sales are down. That’s why experienced sales managers leverage sales games and contests — to inspire their sales teams and freshen up their sales approach.

Still, coming up with great sales contest ideas is a challenge. The wrong sales game can leave reps rolling their eyes and feeling even less driven to contact leads. However, with a little thought and intention, you can create unique sales contests that inspire your team and turn their numbers around in no time.

Why Does Gamification Work for Sales Teams?

Naturally, most people like to be recognized and rewarded for their work. Still, many of the rewards sales teams get aren’t immediate. After an afternoon of rejections, it’s difficult to find the intrinsic motivation to keep pushing for the sale.

Goal-oriented, ambitious, and competitive salespeople often find gamification taps into their natural instincts and offers satisfaction for completing everyday tasks. By bolstering their intrinsic motivation to succeed with extrinsic motivators like cash, prizes, or bragging rights, gamification helps sales teams conquer boredom, strengthen performance, and bring excitement into their daily tasks.

According to Scientific American, the best sales contest ideas also incorporate these three gamification elements to boost motivation:

• Autonomy: Give sales professionals a choice to participate, or choose how to participate, while reinforcing that they are in control of their own success.
• Value: Assigning value to an action can encourage ongoing motivation for completing that task.
• Competence: Consider the capability, skills, and resources necessary to complete a task.

Top 3 Creative Sales Games & Contest Ideas

Here are three unique sales games certain to inspire your team today.

1. Perfect Pair

Contests can feel unfair when new hires are competing against experienced veterans. Knowing who the best performers are can often demotivate other reps from participating in sales contests, knowing that their efforts won’t be recognized.

Instead of pitting all sales people against one another, pair up each newbie with a veteran and allow them to compete as a team. This encourages your motivated veterans to offer mentorship and guidance to their newbie partner, so your whole team improves vital skills.

Make a list of your sales team based on when they joined the team. Then, pair up more experienced employees with less experienced employees they may not have regular contact with. Encourage veterans to listen in on newbie’s calls and provide coaching. Then, offer to buy lunch for the winning team to reinforce the new connection.

Even beyond the day’s sales games, this setup will help your team members build relationships with each other and foster feelings of teamwork and higher morale. Plus, it can help you identify which of your veterans are ready for more responsibility or a promotion.

2. School the Trainer

Learning new sales skills is a must for your team, and a contest is the perfect way to help your team flex their new abilities.

Prepare your team for upcoming training by announcing a School the Trainer contest. In this contest, you’ll have salespeople focus on taking and practicing new actions they’ve learned in their workshop. Start by setting up a points system that celebrates each step of their new skill.

For example, if your team is learning about cross-selling, you can use this point system:

• 1 point for mentioning another product on a phone call or email
• 3 points for connecting the lead to another department for more information on that product
• 5 points for a successful cross-sell order

Throughout the contest, have trainers and coaches review sales calls to offer extra tips and learning opportunities. This can help your team integrate new skills like upselling, gaining SQLs, or building rapport more quickly and effectively. As your trainers and coaches review calls, tally up points and surprise the top three performers with a prize.

3. For a Favor

Selling relies on making the ask, and asking customers for a favor is a great way to improve relationships. Rather than focusing solely on making the sale, create a contest where the goal is to make multiple asks on every call. Assign one point to every request your salesperson makes, including micro-commitments like asking to send a follow-up email, scheduling a call for another time, or asking for a referral.

Research has found that when salespeople ask customers for a favor, customers are more likely to feel there’s a reciprocal relationship — and they’re more inclined to move forward with a negotiation. This supports other research indicating that asking for favors increases likeability and can be disarming in personal relationships.

As coaches listen to your team’s calls, encourage them to showcase when salespeople do a great job in gaining a micro-commitment. Then, tally up the points and reward the winner with a favor from their boss.

Encourage Your Sales team to Succeed With Sales Games

For ambitious salespeople, motivation can wane when sales are down or no one is picking up the phone. Sometimes, extrinsic motivation can revitalize their intrinsic motivation and bring fresh energy to your office. One of the best ways to boost motivation for sales teams is by gamifying their tasks with a sales contest.

Thankfully, you don’t have to spend hours coming up with your own sales games. Try out these awesome contests to inspire your team. If you are looking for sales competition software platforms, check out our Product Selection Tool for the right sales competition platform. The results could yield more than better numbers; they could lead to better collaboration and a more engaged team.

Trending Sales Gamification Software

The post Sales Games & Contest Ideas That Work appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

That leaves channel marketers with an exciting opportunity to differentiate their services and support more clients. But, some of the strategies that channel marketers have used in the past are falling short in 2022. 

Channel marketers need to learn new tactics to generate more leads. Learning from other experienced channel marketers in a great way to discover new B2B marketing strategies and improve your skills. 

Here are the top 5 marketing training certifications for channel marketers. 

1. Dual Certification from the American Marketing Association

In 2022, every marketer needs to be well-rounded and knowledgeable about different marketing tactics. Channel marketers can discover new opportunities for growth by becoming T-shaped marketers with the Professional Certification in Digital Marketing + the Professional Certified Marketer program from the American Marketing Association.

As one of the most well-known and respected certifications in the industry, this is a great opportunity to boost your skills and gain a new perspective on your marketing strategy. However, this certification is far from the only option the American Marketing Association offers. Take their free skills test to help you choose the right certification to take your existing skills to the next level.

2. Certificate in Channel Marketing from the Channel Institute

Getting started in Channel Marketing can be tricky; often, B2C marketers and more traditional B2B professionals don’t have the right context to resell a technology product. The Certificate in Channel Marketing from the Channel Institute is designed with these beginning and intermediate channel marketers in mind. This channel marketing certification offers a great way to expand your skills and learn the fundamentals of reselling partner products.

But, the Channel Institute supports more than just beginners; they also offer certifications in Channel Sales and Co-Marketing, which can provide new insight into how channel marketing can enable sales. As everyone becomes a tech buyer and the traditional process evolves for channel sales, marketers need this additional context to appeal to new audiences and support their sales and implementation teams. 

3. Channel Marketing Trainings at TechRepublic Academy

Learning more about channel marketing doesn’t have to take tons of time or money; skip the lengthy certification courses and strengthen your skills with affordable Channel Marketing Trainings from the TechRepublic Academy instead.

These supplemental marketing classes are a great addition to support wider-reaching certification programs and learn new tactics for email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and more. One-off classes on specific marketing topics can give you new ideas to enhance your current strategy and teach you the hard skills you need to implement and test new marketing practices. 

4. Marketing Channel Strategy Certification from Emory University

As B2B marketing evolves, companies are forced to rethink the strategies they’ve used in the past. However, while many channel marketers are experienced in specific tactics, they may not have a robust understanding of what makes buyers tick and how to create an innovative strategy that works.  

This Marketing Channel Strategy Certification from Emory University goes beyond teaching new tactics to focus on teaching more complex topics, like routes-to-market and the fundamentals behind why channel marketing works. While this course is more academic than tactical, the knowledge you acquire in this certification course can help you enhance your existing channel marketing strategy and reimagine what tactics to try in 2022. 

Plus, a certification from an accredited university can significantly boost your resume and introduce new skills you can leverage in your current job. This handy certification is a great way to prepare for your next promotion and to practice your strategy skills.

5. Instructor-Led Training Workshops through Channel Dynamics

Experienced channel marketers are always looking to enhance their skills and expand their current strategy, but their training needs are often different from their less-experienced peers. Instructor-led workshops offer an opportunity for channel marketers to immerse themselves in advanced channel marketing and management strategies with experts in the field. 

That’s exactly what Channel Dynamics offers with their multi-day Training Workshops. These traditional channel management workshops offer an interactive learning experience where participants can ask questions based on their own business and gain new insight into strengthening their current strategy. This organization offers a variety of courses online and in-person to help expert marketers improve their messaging, presentations, and sales processes.

Enhance Your Skills with the Right Training Resources

In 2022, the expectations facing channel marketers are changing. As more implementation organizations pop up, channel marketers are called to elevate their strategy to appeal to new tech buyers and differentiate their brand. Meanwhile, they’re still responsible for promoting their partner brand and supporting their sales and implementation teams.

Evolving their marketing strategy often requires a new perspective, which marketers can gain through channel marketing training and certification programs. Upskilling is essential to becoming a better channel marketer, and these programs are a great place to start when you’re ready to enhance your skills. Enroll in a new training opportunity today and learn new ways to enhance your company’s marketing strategy.  

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But, even though tools like social media are great for expanding a company’s reach and meeting new people, most users don’t realize that all their followers could disappear in a moment.

Social media followers are just one example of a rented or borrowed audience. With a borrowed audience, businesses use a platform to communicate with their followers. However, if that platform disables your account or experiences downtime, users instantly lose contact with their followers.

Since platforms evolve and change all the time, a borrowed audience is always at risk, so it’s essential for business owners to rely less on borrowed audiences and more on their owned audience.

Here’s everything you need to know about understanding and building your company’s audience, including our top five tactics to build an owned audience.

Owned Audiences and Why Businesses Should Build Them

An owned audience is a customer population contained on platforms your company maintains complete control over. Owned media often includes a company’s website, blog, internal e-learning platforms or communities, and email lists.

Business owners “own” the data generated and collected from the sources they control; they can analyze that customer data, extract it into a separate file to store elsewhere, and import it into different platforms. Contrarily, businesses can’t extract audience data from borrowed sources like social media sites, e-commerce websites like Amazon, or many other external platforms.

In an increasingly pay-to-play business environment, owning your audience offers huge advantages. Creating relationships with your audience is easier when they engage with your company through your owned media channels. Plus, without censorship or limitations, you can hone your messaging and create customized content with a built-in feedback loop and insights from analytics.

Ultimately, this secures your audience against platform changes out of your control and helps you perfect your message, giving you a better bang for your buck on future paid advertising and content marketing campaigns. 

When you own your audience, you can move that data across different platforms, too. If a platform suddenly shuts down or suspends your account, you still have a way to communicate with your customers. However, an owned audience comes with its own responsibilities — namely, companies must securely store customer data once they have it. Otherwise, they may risk a data breach and compromise customer data, which leads to fines and diminished customer trust.

Top 5 Tactics to Build an Owned Audience

Building an owned audience is a great way to connect with your customers in a new way and future-proof your business. But, growing your owned audience often takes longer than expanding your reach on a borrowed platform.

With patience and a strong strategy, you can create an audience that you can depend on. Here are five powerful tactics to help you expand your audience beyond social media and develop an owned audience.

1. Provide value to gain customer data

One of the easiest ways to start an owned audience is to invite your existing audience on social media platforms to join you elsewhere. However, that’s often easier said than done. Most businesses know how to create valuable content that attracts followers on social media, but to entice your audience to a new platform, they need to see you provide different kinds of value.

For example, you can offer a discount for joining your email list, create unique content on your website’s blog, or invite your audience to a virtual or in-person event in exchange for an email address. Use social media to promote these opportunities and get people excited about engaging with your brand beyond their current platform. 

2. Crosslist products on your website

Even if you get steady product sales on Amazon, you’re missing out on an opportunity to grow your owned audience if you aren’t listing your products on your own site, too. Listing products on your website can help you ‌build customer loyalty and learn more about your customers with analytics and demographic data.

You may even make more sales by cross-listing your products on your website. More data allows you to remarket to customers with email campaigns and paid advertising, creating a higher lifetime value per customer. Plus, on your own site, it’s easy to build order volume by upselling and cross-selling products. 

3. Host your own videos and resources on your website

Many e-learning platforms limit what information you can export about your students. Plus, video sharing platforms like YouTube offer limited information about your viewers, making it harder to promote your business. While these tools are great for disseminating information, they aren’t the best way to grow your business.

Instead, build a community and learning platform on your website’s server to maintain better control over your audience. By self-hosting your content, you can continue to provide value to your customers, offer a better user experience, and market relevant products or services to them.

4. Segment your audience

Even if you own your audience now, you won’t for long if your content causes them to unsubscribe. Managing your owned audience is an important component of growing and expanding your business, and one way to effectively manage your owned audience is through segmentation.

Segmenting your audience and providing specific value to different subsets allows you to serve different types of customers most effectively with the most relevant content and offers. In fact, segmented campaigns can increase revenue by up to 760%. 

5. Develop a content strategy

To maintain your owned audience’s interest and engagement, you need to continue providing value. Developing a content strategy can help you offer consistent value that supports their goals and keeps your brand top of mind.

Creating engaging, sharable content doesn’t happen overnight. As you learn more about your audience, you can create a stronger content strategy to entertain them, answer their questions, and help them learn more about your product or services. 

Build Better Relationships and Grow Your Business with an Owned Audience

Relying exclusively on borrowed audiences is a common mistake business owners make. But, as organic reach continues to decline, many companies are eager to find another way to build their audiences.

Creating an owned audience is the only way to maintain consistent control over your customer’s data. With an owned audience, you can grow your business and build relationships with your most engaged customers on your own terms. By learning more about your engaged customers, you can continue to expand your reach and resonate with even more customers.

Now’s the time to start growing your owned audience. Use these helpful tactics to convert your dedicated followers into a valuable owned audience you can support for years to come.

The post Owned Audience: How to Build an Audience for your Business appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Two-factor authentication tools like Authy and Google Authenticator prompt users to verify their identity using another device, adding a second layer of security for business applications. By requiring users to provide another way of verifying their identity, organizations can protect against unauthorized access through compromised credentials or weak passwords.

With so many options available, choosing the right two-step authentication software for your business can be challenging. Two of the most popular choices, Authy and Google Authenticator, are great free options to help your organization embrace a zero trust security approach. Here’s everything you need to know to choose which option is best for your small business. 

What is Authy?

Twilio’s Authy is a free two-factor authentication app (or 2FA app) that allows anyone to leverage improved security using their cell phone.

Typically, when a user logs into an application or service on their computer, they’re asked for a username and password. However, those credentials can easily be stolen and used by bad actors to access an account. Authy provides an additional layer of security by generating a single-use token on their cell phone.

Users enter this unique, timed six-digit code on their computer to securely access their account. Since this code is unique to the user’s phone, a hacker would need access to that user’s credentials and their cell phone to successfully access the account.

Authy lets users sync 2FA across multiple devices, so every login experience is secure. Features like TouchID and Encrypted Backups add even more peace of mind for users and prevent lockouts, even if they lose a device.

What is Google Authenticator?

Google Authenticator is one of the most popular free 2FA apps. Like Authy, Google Authenticator lets users generate timed six-digit or eight-digit codes on an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry to strengthen login security. This 2FA option also uses QR codes to create a token for each website you want additional security for.

Google Authenticator started as an open-source product, but once Google designed a proprietary version, it became known as the minimalist and familiar alternative to newer 2FA applications. For users who leverage the full suite of Google products, Google Authenticator has remained a top choice.

Beyond time-based one-time passwords (TOTP), Google Authenticator also offers the more user-friendly event-based passwords (HMAC-based one-time passwords, or HOTP), which eliminate the time-based element and generate a new key by request that users can enter in their own time. 

The differences between Authy and Google Authenticator

Choosing the right 2FA application is essential to keep your sensitive data and systems safe.

Here are the primary features to look for in a 2FA application and how Authy and Google Authenticator stack up on these critical aspects. 

Large range of supported services

The most powerful two-factor authentication apps work alongside the tools, systems, and websites your team uses most. When you’re able to leverage 2FA security across multiple applications, you have the highest likelihood of protecting your data. While almost all 2FA tools work with the services listed in the 2FA directory, some sites may offer more robust protection with different 2FA tools.

Google Authenticator has been the standard for 2FA for over a decade, so almost all third-party apps and operating systems work well with this tool. Plus, accounts can easily be added to the Google Authenticator app using a QR code, making onboarding new apps and systems quick and easy, even if each device must be set up separately. Google Authenticator supports Android, iOS, and Blackberry devices.

Authy takes support a step further than Google Authenticator. While it may not connect with as many third-party applications, it supports many more devices beyond Android and iOS devices; Authy also works with desktop computers running Windows, Linux, or macOS along with Apple Watches. One account easily links to multiple devices, making it easy to set up. However, Authy does not currently support Blackberry devices.

Authy also leverages QR codes to set up accounts, but only on mobile devices. Desktop applications must be added to the Authy app manually. 

Security capabilities

2FA is popular because it depends on using another device as a second form of authentication, making it particularly difficult for malicious actors to access. However, should your employee’s phone or computer fall into the wrong hands, it’s critical that your 2FA app is protected, so they don’t gain access to all of your business applications.

Authy enables a PIN and biometric authentication like TouchID to protect data against unauthorized use. Plus, Authy encrypts all backups, so your data is protected against breaches. If a user loses their device, the cloud-based backups allow them to easily access their passwords again on another device.

Additional security is one of the weak points of the bare-bones Google Authenticator app. Without passcodes or biometric sign-on options, Google Authenticator can put your data at risk if a device is lost or stolen. Plus, a misplaced device can present an even bigger headache; without backups, restoring your Google Authenticator account is a commonly referenced pain point, forcing users to reconfigure all of their accounts on a new device or leverage complicated workarounds to create a backup. This is one of the main reasons why users often switch from Google Authenticator to Authy. 

Also Read: Are Biometrics the Answer to MFA’s Shortcomings? Probably Not.

Streamlined user experience

Many employees consider 2FA to be a necessary evil, protecting company data at the expense of an inconvenient user experience. A streamlined user experience and good UI can make a big difference in encouraging your team to leverage two-factor authentication.

Simple, user-friendly Google Authenticator may not have a modern UI, but the minimalist style makes it extremely easy to use. Generating TOTP or HOTP codes is quick and easy, making logging in a breeze. However, the options for logins are still comparatively limited; while Google Authenticator offers the less-secure HOTP option, it forgos the one time password (OTP) options like SMS and voice calls as verification options. 

It’s also worth noting that Google Authenticator does not offer push notifications, so scrambling to open the app and generate a code for login can be a pain for some users and slow productivity.

Meanwhile, Authy’s sleek UI makes it a user favorite. This easy-to-use app leverages push notifications to help you authenticate your identity faster and access systems easily. Plus, while it doesn’t offer the untimed HOTP codes like Google Authenticator, it does present both TOTP and OTP capabilities to provide more convenient authentication options no matter what device users have nearby.

How to use Authy and Google Authenticator for your small business

Small businesses often need to give employees access to critical systems, but allowing access to your sensitive information can be unsettling without additional security precautions. While 2FA apps can’t replace a robust cybersecurity strategy and IT support, they can make remote access more secure and more accessible for small businesses, giving business owners peace of mind.

Using Authy or Google Authenticator helps small businesses confidently support workers operating remotely or within an office. By requiring an extra level of authentication, businesses can use multiple services and applications more securely on a wide range of devices. Plus, these free options are an affordable way to protect your business against data leaks and unauthorized access.

Looking for more information about protecting your small business’s data? Contact the TechnologyAdvice team today to explore cybersecurity software that fits your needs!

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Establishing a data-driven culture can feel clunky at first. Even with top-of-the-line business software, your business is missing out on huge opportunities if they’re spending time toggling between BI tools and multiple critical business applications.

Becoming truly data-driven means using insights to support both your major business decisions and many of the smaller decisions your employees make every day. However, without embedded analytics, your team may not be using the data available to the fullest.

Integrating advanced analytics into your software tools goes far beyond a productivity boost. In fact, you’d be shocked how big incorporating data visualization and modeling into tools like a CRM, ERP, or HCM can make on your bottom line. Embedded analytics can even make a huge difference for your customers, too!

Here are the results you can expect when you start working with embedded analytics.

Better decision-making improves agility

If you’re already using BI tools, you know the power data plays in making decisions with confidence. But, if you’re only making big decisions based on monthly reports, you may not be seeing the results you expected from transitioning to a data-driven approach.

Embedding analytics provides the power of data at the point of each little decision your teams make throughout the day. Instead of switching between different software tools or struggling with analysis paralysis, embedded analytics provide the most relevant information in easy-to-understand dashboards and data visualizations so employees gain rapid insights to make decisions faster.

With embedded analytics tools like Sisense, employees can manipulate blended data and see trends with predictive analytics without leaving their current application. This offers the agility to take advantage of new business opportunities at a moment’s notice and make informed decisions that align with the company’s objectives. Now, revenue-driving decisions don’t need to involve requesting reports from IT or spending countless hours in meetings.

We all know agility offers a competitive edge, and embedded analytics make it easier to trust your team to quickly and confidently make the smaller decisions that can have a big impact.

Strengthening customer experience with big data

Typically, when we talk about BI tool use cases, we focus on the strength of analytics for internal use. Using data within your customer service, operations, human resources, and marketing tools can make a huge difference in making impactful business decisions. But, both B2B and B2C companies can reap substantial benefits from embedding analytics in their customer-facing applications, too.

For example, embedded analytics in your product can connect customers with valuable machine learning and AI decisions that make your product an indispensable part of their workflow. Feeding data you’re already collating and blending through your product can create powerful new revenue streams, offer cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, and dramatically increase the stickiness of your product. In fact, 94% of companies say they see higher customer satisfaction metrics due to embedded analytics.

Meanwhile, adding embedded analytics and data visualization through tools like Tableau into commercial apps can provide customers insights into their financial, health, or professional performance. Consumers are more interested than ever in using data to optimize myriad areas of their personal lives, and embedded analytics offer the automation necessary to present actionable insights to drive self-improvement.

Streamlined workflows for more productive, deep work

Let’s face it: switching between apps is distracting and takes up a ton of time, but it often feels unavoidable when we’re consulting emails, tools, and reports to complete a simple task. When the average employee uses over 90 applications a month, there are a lot of opportunities to get off track or make small errors that cause big headaches.

Embedded analytics doesn’t just offer the insight you need to stay in the tool and remain focused on the task at hand. These solutions also feature automation that can simplify tasks and trigger workflows based on KPIs and recorded outcomes. AI-powered automation helps employees prioritize important work and streamline workflows more effectively.

Groundbreaking 2003 research measuring productivity found that even small mental gaps from switching between applications can decrease productivity by 40%. Keeping employees engaged and productive means empowering them to dive deep into tasks, and embedding analytics plays a big role in keeping employees on track.

Generating revenue and cost savings

The biggest concern for companies considering new software is whether they’ll see an equivalent ROI. While traditional BI tools can offer extremely valuable insights, they may fall short of meeting ROI goals if adoption is slow. One of the most powerful aspects of embedded analytics is how easy it is for users to adopt and use data within their existing workflows.

When teams are using the data available to them in tools they’re already comfortable with, they’re more likely to make data-informed decisions that offer new opportunities for revenue. Embedding analytics can even decrease costly errors from copying and pasting across applications.

Even back in 2015, BARC research showed that companies using embedded analytics saw on average 8% higher revenue and 10% lower costs. Now, 96% of business professionals say embedded analytics contributes to revenue growth in their companies. It’s clear that embedded analytics isn’t only delivering ROI; it’s also presenting new ways for companies to earn money and cut costs across the business.

Reaping the benefits of an embedded analytics solution

In our data-driven business culture, advanced analytics are becoming table stakes to maintain market share in a competitive industry. Embedded analytics is a must for businesses that want to leverage new business opportunities and increase revenue quickly. Even if your company is already using traditional BI tools, embedded analytics may be the secret to achieving the ROI and competitive edge you’re looking for.

Not sure what your company needs in an embedded analytics solution? Contact us today at 855.718.1369 and we’ll help you find the perfect business intelligence tool to support your business goals.

The post Driving Business Results with Embedded Analytics appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

However, choosing the right Business Intelligence (BI) tools and configuration for your organization goes beyond picking the most popular option. While IT may be well-versed in what different tools can accomplish, they might not consider the impact implementation will have across the enterprise — especially if less tech-savvy professionals will be using the tools, too.

Technical considerations are just one part of picking the right BI solution. Culture ultimately plays a significant role in the successful adoption of a new tool.

Here’s how you can decide if a traditional vs. self-service BI tool is better for your company culture.

To be data-driven, you need data literacy first

Many companies love self-service BI tools because they enable employees to run their own reports and visualize real-time data. With training and a robust data governance strategy, many employees can quickly learn how to slice and dice data to gain rapid insights.

But, depending on the data literacy of your employees, choosing a self-service model can pose a security risk to your data. Plus, without governance, people across the enterprise may start reporting in ways that cause confusion and compromise data credibility.

While your employees don’t need to be data scientists to run reports with BI tools, they still need basic data literacy skills and technical competency to adopt a new tool. If professionals in your organization are accustomed to requesting reports from analysts, they may not have the necessary skills to analyze their own data. In fact, your employees may not even see a reason to use BI tools to build a business case!

Think about who will get access to your BI tools within your company. Is your organization more traditionally-minded? Are conversations about data common in meetings at all levels and across all departments?

Driving business value with data literacy

Establishing data literacy is a huge hurdle for many businesses, and will only increase as companies become more reliant on data to make decisions.

Giving more employees access to data isn’t enough to promote data literacy; for a self-service model to work, there must be a cultural commitment to strengthening data literacy across the organization. Even beyond teaching users how to use BI tools effectively, promoting data literacy also involves ongoing training and support around data governance and security best practices.

If your company isn’t ready to focus on enterprise-wide data literacy, it’s best to start with a traditional BI model, where only data and IT professionals generate reports. Limiting access to your BI tool reduces security concerns and maintains standard practices around reporting.

Traditional BI tools like SAP Business Objects or IBM Cognos Analytics often have a more substantial learning curve than self-service tools like Qlik, Tableau, or Power BI can be more user-friendly. Without the right data governance strategy in place, user-friendly self-service tools can compromise your company’s single source of truth with unverified or inaccurate data.

Ultimately, how prepared is your organization to provide training for a new tool? That brings us to the next biggest determinant of BI tool success: change management.

Shifting the company’s mindset

Preparing your employees to adopt a BI tool can be a major change, especially if they haven’t used BI in their role before. A change management strategy is essential to see high adoption rates and ROI for both traditional and self-service tools.

Often, a change management strategy starts with a mindset shift. Becoming a data-driven organization starts from the top and trickles down; C-Suite sponsors need to demonstrate the value of using data to make decisions at every level of the organization.

A substantial part of your change management strategy is providing sufficient communication and training before and after implementation. Educating employees on when the change will happen, why you’re making the change, and how it will impact their work are the first step.

Next, you need to incentivize your employees to change their work habits. By supporting employees to see how BI tools make their daily work easier, incentivizing new behavior, and providing ongoing training and support as they learn the tool, they’re much more likely to transition effectively.

Identifying the Source of Resistance

Resistance takes many forms, and almost any implementation sees some resistance. Identifying resistance, mitigating fear of change, and increasing confidence in your user base are integral to creating change that lasts. However, that change looks very different across traditional BI tool users and self-service users.

The more users have access to a tool, the more different types of resistance you’ll experience and the more robust of a change management strategy you need. A self-service tool can be a powerful way to start shifting toward a data-driven approach, but only if users are empowered with the skills they need to succeed.

Depending on your business needs, you may need to sacrifice a beginner-friendly system like Power BI for the robust capabilities of Tableau or Sisense. However, if a tool is too challenging for their current skill set, self-service users will revert to requesting reports from data specialists and IT. Remember – you don’t have to give all users access at the same time, so you can always choose the self-service tool that best fits your needs and train users incrementally.

Resistance is equally as common with traditional BI tools; it simply takes a different form. For example, if your analyst team doesn’t trust the credibility of your single source of data, they’ll resort to doing what they’ve always done – like spending hours in Excel. Traditional BI tools with a familiar spreadsheet interface, like Zoho Analytics, may lower resistance.

If you’re still building a case for data-driven decision making — especially at the executive level — a traditional BI tool would likely deliver higher ROI and better adoption rates.

Before choosing a BI tool, speak with different types of users to better understand their needs. Interviewing users can help you choose which tools are the best fit for your business.

Transform culture with the right tools

Becoming a data-driven organization doesn’t happen overnight; even with the best BI tools on the market, it often takes a cultural shift to realize the true ROI of your implementation. However, picking the right tool for your current business can pave the way for a cultural transformation.

Understanding the needs of your end-users makes it easier to select the right tool. Whether you choose traditional vs. self-service BI, you’re taking a critical step toward becoming a data-driven enterprise.

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Still, despite the near-ubiquitous demand for data solutions, many businesses continue to rely on tools like Excel to process data. As leaders hear horror stories of drawn-out implementations and low adoption rates, they feel immense pressure to either stick with the status quo or find the perfect solution for their businesses. For many of these leaders, picking the right BI tool isn’t as clear-cut as it seems.

One of the primary choices to make is whether you need a traditional vs self-service BI model. Before you decide which option is right for your business, there are some technical and logistical considerations you should think about first. Here are some common factors to consider before choosing a BI tool.

Compliance Demands

BI tools are an important component of your data governance strategy. With the right processes, these tools can easily be set up to manage high compliance reporting demands. However, traditional tools are often favored over self-service tools in organizations with strict compliance needs.

Self-service tools make it easy for anyone with the right permissions to run reports, analyze data, and garner insights, even if they don’t have an analytics or IT background. Without enforcing best practices or developing robust data management processes, the environment is ripe for inefficiencies.

When people across the enterprise can freely add new data sources, share reports with external stakeholders, and slice and dice the data at will, it can pose a security or credibility risk to your single source of truth.

Meanwhile, a traditional BI tool limits access to experienced team members in your IT department and data specialists. Fewer users make it easier to ensure procedures are followed, so data is clean and accurate for compliance reporting. While this can be achieved with self-service tools, too, it requires more detailed team training and more robust procedures to maintain data integrity.

IT or Analytics Team Bandwidth

While traditional BI tools can maintain a more reliable single source of truth, it comes at a cost for many overwhelmed IT and analytics departments. With a traditional BI tool, teams across the enterprise request reports from IT or dedicated data specialists.

Depending on the size of your organization and your current structures, this can quickly lead to chaos for your analytics experts.

Self-service tools are designed in part to solve this bandwidth issue. By offering access to other teams, they can skip the middleman and run reports themselves. Ultimately, culture plays a big role in whether or not your teams will adapt to analyzing their own data and running their own reports. For many seasoned organizations, the standard work style may not align with a self-service method.

Many BI tools make creating reports and modeling data easier than ever, but that realization may lead to other teams requesting more unnecessary reports or self-generating reports that don’t align with your company’s reporting standards. There may also be more requests into IT to edit or change dashboards or add new data sources, too.

Look at the current workload for your IT and analytics departments and see if they can take on an influx of reporting requests. Consider that part of your IT team will still be responsible for managing the tool’s health and performance. If your teams don’t have the bandwidth, it benefits your company to adopt a self-service model with robust training and clear best practices.

Agility Expectations

As you can guess, requesting reports from IT can present a bottleneck. If you’re committed to becoming a more agile company, a legacy BI tool with more traditional management may not support your goals.

One powerful component of modern BI tools is the ability to slice and dice real-time data on demand. While any BI tool can help you make more data-driven decisions, a self-service tool offers the unique benefit of reviewing dashboards and modeling data on demand for faster decision-making. Plus, when new information is needed to make a choice, well-versed employees can present real-time data from their computer within a meeting, rather than asking IT to generate a new report for them.

Analyzing and modeling data on the fly is essential for fast decision-making, especially if IT has a reporting backlog. Self-service models can also present unique opportunities for future-driven predictive and prescriptive modeling — even with unstructured data — that are limited within traditional BI models, which rely on structured data. Still, these capabilities come at a cost, and the unstructured data can bring reporting results into question.

Security Standards

Along with compliance, security is one of the key reasons an enterprise would typically opt for a traditional BI model.

A traditional BI tool is an on-prem solution, leaving health and performance solely in the hands of your IT department. However, if your enterprise has highly sensitive data or data security concerns, a traditional BI tool ensures that your data is stored securely on site.

While traditional BI tools can sap IT resources, they’re also easier to monitor for security concerns. Cloud-based self-service tools present security concerns for some organizations, especially teams that primarily use legacy on-prem tools. Some IT teams may worry about observability across the tech stack as they introduce and integrate new cloud-based tools.

A robust data governance strategy is a must to maintain security expectations with either type of tool. However, you may need to put more procedures in place to reduce security risks with a self-service tool.

Is Traditional BI or Self-Service BI Better For You?

Companies know they need better access to their data to make decisions. While the real-time capabilities of self-service BI are tempting, these tools may require more substantial changes than your business is ready for.

The best BI tool for your business is one that gets used. Before you jump into implementing a new tool, make sure you examine how your business operates and make an informed choice. Review these technical considerations with your teams to discover which tool is best for you.

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