Smartbi Excel integration analysis-perfect integration of Excel and BI, truly empowering first-line users

In today’s big data era, as the amount of enterprise data grows, if you still rely entirely on the technical department to develop reports, there will be long development requirements, inability to flexibly analyze in multiple dimensions, and increase the burden on the IT department. Even the cumbersome process makes us change rapidly. Missed opportunities in the market. Users need to find a new balance between control and agility.

The appearance of self-service BI greatly reduces the threshold of data analysis. It is aimed at business analysts who do not have an IT background. Compared with traditional BI, it is more flexible and has a more user-friendly user interface. It also gets rid of the dependence on the IT department to a certain extent. Business personnel rely on their own expertise. Knowledge can explore various possible situations and finally get answers.

Introduction: the advantages and problems of Excel

We know that Excel is the most widely used analysis tool today, simple to use and powerful. Most business users of enterprises are more accustomed to using Excel, mainly based on the following advantages that other tools cannot replace:

1. Excel provides very powerful and flexible data processing, data analysis and data visualization capabilities, and has a large number of formulas and functions, which are easy to learn and use.

2. There are a large number of Excel-based report templates for users. These templates have accumulated a lot of business wisdom. If they are replaced with other analysis tools, Excel business templates cannot be reused.

3. While the analytical tools on the market provide users with analytical capabilities, they also limit their imagination. They are far inferior to Excel in terms of functional flexibility and cannot meet the analytical functional needs of business users.

In today's environment where self-service BI is gradually becoming popular, no matter what self-service BI product is launched, most business users still use Excel as the main analysis tool. However, Excel analysis also has several problems that have long plagued front-line users:

1. The data acquisition process is troublesome. Especially for periodic data acquisition, I have to ask IT staff for help every time, and then paste it into Excel.

2. Security and convenience of sharing. Most users share Excel files via email or instant messaging software. First, the files are flying all over the sky, which is not easy to manage; secondly, the permissions are not well controlled, and it is impossible to share only the analysis results without sharing the detailed data; finally, the data cannot be different for each person, and the data is dynamically updated according to user permissions .

3. Finally, users will encounter performance bottlenecks. For large amounts of data, Excel is very slow to process, even if it exceeds 1 million rows, it does not support it at all.

Analysis: the background of Excel fusion analysis

Through the above understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of Excel, many companies have turned to BI tools to solve their current data analysis problems.

In the professional BI field, the debut of self-service BI has greatly reduced the threshold of data analysis. Most self-service analysis tools have common advantages: such as powerful data acquisition capabilities; high performance, rapid processing of tens of millions or billions of data; powerful Data analysis function; high security; sharing platform.

These functions are also lacking in Excel, but the common self-service BI tools on the market are not friendly to users who rely heavily on Excel: 1. To learn new software, there is a learning cost; 2. It is more difficult to promote in enterprises on a large scale ; 3. The original Excel analysis template is difficult to implement in the new BI software, and smart assets cannot be continued.

So how to let Excel users use the self-service BI function without changing their habits is a question we need to think about. It is required that it is simple and easy to use and can solve Excel's problems; it must also maintain the advantages of Excel and continue to use Excel templates and data. Based on this consideration, Smartbi Excel fusion analysis came into being at this turning point!

It is a self-service data analysis tool that combines Excel and BI organically. It greatly simplifies the operational threshold of BI. It combines the advantages of Excel, solves the problems of Excel, and truly empowers first-line business users of enterprises , Let everyone be a data analyst, and promote the digital operation of the enterprise.

Excel Fusion Analysis is to conduct self-service analysis after self-service data retrieval on Excel. It perfectly combines the advantages of Excel and BI. It has three key features:

1. By simply checking, it can satisfy business users' self-service data preparation.

2. Completely retain Excel's data reprocessing and data analysis capabilities. All analysis work is done in Excel.

3. Solve the problem of data sharing. Reports are shared via web links, data is updated in real time, and each user can only see the data within his own authority.

Case: Customer (KA) goal achievement progress management

The following will uncover the mystery of Excel fusion analysis with the case of customer (KA) goal achievement progress management .

We know that schedule management is a core content throughout the entire life cycle of a project, and it plays an increasingly important role in the construction of informatization projects. In particular, the effective use of schedule control in actual work is of great significance for achieving the goals of the project and then completing the final charging target of the project, promoting the development and growth of the company and achieving various strategic goals.

Originally, to realize this resource, you need to submit an application to a technician. After the data is obtained, the business will manually accumulate the data one by one into the Excel table. At this time, the data cannot be consistent with the real-time data; if the analysis results are completed, if they are shared with others See, it needs to be sent manually through communication software, and the data and the results shown in the report cannot be separated. There is no sharing platform that can allocate permissions.

Now, BI tools can be used to fetch data through Excel's fusion analysis function, which maintains the real-time nature of data, and business personnel use tools to fetch data by themselves. At the same time, technical personnel can also be free from repetitive work, improve work efficiency, and truly achieve People do their best. Data analysis is performed in a familiar interface like Excel, which not only reuses the Excel template results, but also retains Excel's data reprocessing and data analysis capabilities. And a unified sharing platform and complete authority control solve the sharing problem.

The following will introduce to you a case of how to use Excel fusion analysis to achieve customer (KA) goal achievement progress management.

You can learn about the production steps of this example through the following small video

→Demonstration video link←

(1) Open the Excel template and switch to the Smartbi report designer. In the template interface, log in to the Excel designer, select the default report type as Excel fusion analysis, and enter the Excel fusion analysis design interface.
(2) The report designer completely retains Excel's data reprocessing and data analysis capabilities. And all the analysis work is done in Excel. Right-click to create a perspective analysis directly in the data set panel. Let the user complete the data preparation work by simply dragging and dragging the required data fields visually.

Explain that
if necessary, it also supports drag-and-drop generation parameter filtering to realize dynamic refresh of data.
Solve the performance problem of large data volume by extracting data to the cache library.

(3) Next, we drag the prepared data fields into Excel on another sheet page of the template, and click Refresh to get the data into Excel.

(4) Switch to the Excel template sheet, and associate the data in the database with the data in the local Excel through Excel's VLookup, Sumifs and other functions.

(5) Support convenient and safe sharing. When publishing, we support authorization, and authorization is divided into the following situations:

• For public data sets and public display resources, we can easily share the resources through the visual interface by simply checking them. The granularity and scope of sharing can also be selected according to the needs, so that each person’s data is different and the realization User permissions dynamically update data.

• For resources that are not suitable for "sharing", for example, based on personal data sets including uploaded Excel, and Excel fusion analysis reports including offline data. Sharing will bring the risk of personal data "spreading". At this time, we can publish it to personal space or control access to users when authorized.

• (6) After completing the analysis, publish the analysis results to the Web, so that users can view the analysis results through browsers and mobile terminals.

Summary: Features of Excel Fusion Analysis

From the above case, we can see that Excel Fusion Analysis is a self-service analysis after self-service data retrieval on Excel. It learns from each other's strengths and perfectly integrates Excel and BI. It not only retains the user's habit of using Excel for data analysis, but also makes up for the performance of Excel. With defects such as sharing and permissions, the operation of the entire process is also very simple and easy to use.

Three key features of Excel fusion analysis

1. By simply checking, it can satisfy business users' self-service data preparation.

2. Completely retain Excel's data reprocessing and data analysis capabilities. All analysis work is done in Excel.

3. Solve the problem of data sharing. Reports are shared via web links, data is updated in real time, and each user can only see the data within his own authority.

Excel fusion analysis other characteristics and value

1. Operate on Excel to save learning costs. There is no need to export data and then perform analysis to improve efficiency.

2. Not only supports chart analysis, but also supports the use of pivot tables.

3. Realize dynamic data update through parameter filtering etc.

4. It not only solves the problem of data sharing, but also solves the problems of Excel authority management and its own performance.

If you are also accustomed to using Excel, you not only want to retain the wisdom of Excel, but also want to have the ability of BI tools to be easy to share, easy to manage, and easy to authorize, so as to truly empower the first-line business users of the enterprise and make everyone a data analysis The teacher becomes possible. If you are interested in Eagle's characteristic function-Excel fusion analysis, please contact us to learn more about trying Eagle products!