- [Paul] Hello, and welcome to this video series
on the Power BI Adoption Framework,
which is about empowering every decision maker.
I'm Paul.
- [Manu] And I'm Manu.
- [Paul] And in this video, we will talk about
why we believe governance is important for Power BI
and self-service BI.
Today, almost everyone in every organization engages
with software applications, and yet, only about a quarter
of the employees have access to analytics.
During the first two waves of business intelligence,
IT professionals and business analysts
were the keepers of BI.
They made it accessible and consumable for end users.
While this approach still applies to complex
business intelligence needs, today, there is a new wave.
This third wave of BI makes it available to every user.
Microsoft's mission is to democratize analytics.
So, the intent is that every person in every organization
should have access to data.
It's definitely something that can be achieved
in today's world.
Although, there are a few challenges that we need
to overcome in order to do that.
The most common challenges with BI are that it can be
difficult for senior leaders and business users
to see a complete picture of the business.
Managing multiple data sources can also be a challenge,
especially with data residing in line-
of-business applications, SaaS solutions,
and other external locations.
And the key challenge is to make the right data available
to the right users at the right time.
Mobile business users need the latest operational data
at their fingertips no matter where they are
or what device they're using.
Different roles have different needs and access levels.
So, a one-size-fits-all solution doesn't work.
- [Manu] A lot of customers tell us that they've tried
self-service BI with other tools before,
but they've ended up in a situation like this.
Admittedly, this is something that can happen
with any tool in the absence of a strategic vision
and a governance strategy.
On the other hand, a minimal governance plan
that provides guidance to the employees can go a long way
in enabling self-service BI in a structured way.
The idea is not to create rules or boundaries
but to provide guidance on how self-service BI
should be used in the organization.
As the Spider-Man quote goes, "With great power,
"comes great responsibility."
So rather than taking the power away,
helping people understand how the power can be used
responsibly can lay the foundation of a data culture
in the organization.
If the organization has experienced uncontrolled
proliferation of unsupported BI applications in the past,
then there may be a realization that your chances of success
with self-service BI can be increased massively
by being a little bit mindful about it.
This can be done by developing a governance plan
that implements processes for data security,
governance, auditing, and data classification,
and once you have a governance strategy,
it can help drive infrastructure and technology decisions,
reduce risks, and lead to increased user adoption
since both business and IT are involved from the start.
The key thing with data governance is
that if you don't make decisions up front,
someone else will make those decisions later,
and that may not be the best decision for your organization.
So, here are some examples of decisions
that employees end up making if guidance or procedures
are not in place.
Power BI service is hosted in the cloud.
So, it's really important to provide guidance to employees
on which type of data can
and can't be uploaded to the service
rather than letting people decide through intuition.
Power BI allows you to share data and reports
with the entire organization.
However, if everybody starts doing that,
then it'll be difficult to identify meaningful information.
You can also share data with external users via Power BI.
However, it's important to identify scenarios in which
your employees will actually do that
and possibly control who can do this.
Publish to web is an interesting option.
It's a setting that's on by default.
So we've had some instances where people have used
this option as a workaround for licensing or sharing
and not realized that the reports get published
to the public internet.
Some of our visuals share data with our partner firms.
For example, your use of ArcGIS maps for Power BI
is subject to Esri's terms and privacy policy,
and some data is shared with Esri.
This may or may not be important to you,
but it's worth knowing and making an informed decision
as the data may leave geographical boundaries
when you use a partner service.
The same could happen with any other custom visual,
so vetting them for use in the organization is advisable.
Audit logging is a great feature and can help you backtrack
activities to meet compliance requirements,
but if it's not enabled and the logs are not backed up
appropriately, you may not be compliant
with your auditing requirements.
I hope these examples helps you understand
that it is important to make governance decisions up front
as every organization is different,
and it's really important to have a governance strategy
that works best for the organization.
We have included a link to the slides that we've used
in this presentation in the description below.
Thanks for listening, and if you have any feedback
or questions, please leave a comment below.
See you in the next one.