I'm curious what you've found works the best for finding people (employees, contractors, other resources) capable of drawing insights (or making heads/tails) out of the data? We're always trying to have a helpful perspective for customers - as well as wanting to give a great "push in the back" to get them going on that dimension as well.
peschu|4 years ago
I think the most efficient way is to have inhouse staff for visualizing data and extracting insights. They should be able to cover 70-90% of the demand. The remaining part and possible peaks in demand should be covered by a contractor(s).
In the long run, this makes sure you have a reliable contractor, who already knows you (the company) and also the infrastructure and meaning of your data. It helps a lot for example when an employee is sick or has left the company. So you can bridge the gap with almost no delay.
Most employees don't want (and often don't have time) to learn additional tools for anayltics & data visualization next to their daily business. And the data models quickly become too complex for "casual users". To make "self-service BI" really possible it needs a lot of work upfront (to prepare data etc.). I think I never saw "self-service BI" working in the real world. (maybe some "poweruser" in finance & controlling)
Imho the best case would be to have a specialized BI team which works together with the domain experts to create insights. Normally the persons from specific departments know their data very well and they are very helpful in the process of finding insights. They often have already done reports/calculations etc. before. But the manual process is just too complicated, too slow or whatever.