Success story

Company-wide BI enablement and self-service at a large retailer

To derive the greatest value from any BI investment, entire business communities must be empowered to ask their own questions of the data via self-service. Leading BI and analytics consultancy, Keyrus, has responded to this emerging trend in the market by developing a dynamic, interactive training program that is delivering significant benefits for customers.

The leadership of Mr. Price Group, JSE listed retail company and one of the largest retailers in South Africa, had the foresight to invest in the new generation of BI tools and implemented Tableau throughout their operations. Following the successful implementation, their focus turned to the need to enable as many of their business people as possible to ask their own questions of the data. These users must be able to extract relevant information for fast, competent decision-making. Ensuring users understand these powerful tools, and how to ‘operate’ them, is key to creating data-driven businesses.

Keyrus is championing the need for BI and analytics business-wide enablement, in line with its mission of ‘making data matter’. The consultancy has developed the Explorer Tableau training course, a dynamic, interactive program for business-wide enablement of the world-class data visualisation tool, Tableau.

Equipped with this unique program, Keyrus has embarked on an enablement journey for the Mr. Price Group, which is looking to train over 250 team members over the next months.

The success of the Keyrus training lies in its methodology. Each session is customised to the particular customer, using their own data, which makes it relatable and relevant.

“We ensured that the training used data from various business areas, making it relevant to all users. I believe this is so important for true company-wide adoption of BI,” explains Craig Andrew, Head of BI & Analytics at Keyrus.

Feedback from the initial session, involving 50 delegates, was overwhelmingly positive. “We have had great feedback; the users love it!” comments Jason Du Randt, BI Solution Manager, at Mr. Price Group.

“The training created excitement across the diverse business functions about data and its value for everyday decision-making,” notes Craig Andrew. “In addition, it went a long way towards engendering a data-driven culture among the business team members who may not have ever been exposed to BI tools.”

The rise of self-service analytics and business-wide enablement

To date, Keyrus has conducted this training at three customers the Mr. Price Group, Namibia Breweries, and Distell.

“The main objective of our new enablement program is to train a wide range of people throughout the business to effectively ‘operate’ their BI tool and extract information important for them,” says Adam Walker, General Manager at Keyrus, who points out that Keyrus has recently been awarded and prestigious global ‘EMEA Tableau Rising Star’ award. This award is an acknowledgment of Keyrus’s outstanding technical capabilities and customer service implementing Tableau solution.

“One of our key priorities is skills transfer,” explains Walker. “We aim to enable our clients as we've seen that the most effective change comes from within the business.”

“The benefits are enormous, the major one being speed to insight,” he says. “Users obtain accurate information immediately, enabling informed, data-driven decision-making.”

“We at Keyrus focus on extracting insights and value from data - we know it has the ability to move us forward in a positive direction, not just economically, but environmentally and socially as well,” concludes Walker. “We refer to this as humanising data, and it is a key pillar of the way we do business.”

This article was published by ITWeb