s3e14 Exploring the Growth of End-to-End No Code Business Solutions, Part 2 with Donald MacCormick

Episode Summary

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.

In this episode, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, Donald MacCormick continues to provide his insights on Business Intelligence solutions. Donald doesn’t hold back on his opinions of self-service B.I. and why it is not the answer. He provides unique and in-depth examples of why successful B.I. interfaces should require little to no effort, training or documentation from the end user. Finally, Donald provides self-service B.I. analogies ranging from the restaurant industry to the healthcare industry.

Key Takeaways

00:29 – Donald MacCormick joins the show for Part 2 of Exploring the Growth of End-to-End No Code Business Solutions to discuss why self-service B.I. not the answer

05:14 – The evolution of Business Objects

10:30 – Donald recalls an interesting story about self-service reporting

12:54 – The importance of tools like Tableau

14:16 – Donald speaks to self-service B.I. in the restaurant industry

19:54 – The doctor analogy

Tweetable Quotes

“Self-service B.I. is demonstratively not the answer because we have tried it four, five, six times over. We keep trying to reinvent it.” (01:17)

“The quicker you get data to people that’s meaningful to them, the more they can use that in their everyday life.” (03:41)

“If you ask any CEO of any organization, ‘How much time do you want your salespeople to spend on querying data?’ The answer should be ‘Zero.’” (08:03)

“We no longer go out and fish for our dinner. The same should be true of reporting. We’re no longer saying everybody should do everything. We’re saying there are people who are good at this who can deliver it to the end users. We should have an information supply chain so that the end users don’t need to do self-service reporting.” (12:07)

“The amount of effort, training and documentation that is required to use a good B.I. interface should be about the same as is required to select and eat a pre-prepared sandwich. I.e. none.” (16:25)

“When you go to your television and you want to find out what’s on tonight, what do you do? You push this button called, ‘Guide,’ and it comes up on the screen and it’s a nice way of looking at what’s on the television. It doesn’t say, ‘Here’s an at-home query tool whereby you can query any television program in the world right now.’” (22:02)

Resources Mentioned

Limitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/

Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk

Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/