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Enabling self-service BI: A methodology and a case study for a model management warehouse

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Abstract

The promise of Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI) is its ability to give business users access to selection, analysis, and reporting tools without requiring intervention from IT. This is essential if BI is to maximize its contribution by radically transforming how people make decisions. However, while some progress has been made through tools such as SAS Enterprise Miner, IBM SPSS Modeler, and RapidMiner, analytical modeling remains firmly in the domain of IT departments and data scientists. The development of tools that mitigate the need for modeling expertise remains the “missing link” in self-service BI, but prior attempts at developing modeling languages for non-technical audiences have not been widely implemented. By introducing a structured methodology for model formulation specifically designed for practitioners, this paper fills the unmet need to bring model-building to a mainstream business audience. The paper also shows how to build a dimensional Model Management Warehouse that supports the proposed methodology, and demonstrates the viability of this approach by applying it to a problem faced by the Division of Fiscal and Actuarial Services of the US Department of Labor. The paper concludes by outlining several areas for future research.

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Notes

  1. There are 53 UI jurisdictions. They include the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. State is used here to refer to a UI jurisdiction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    David Schuff

  2. Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA

    Karen Corral

  3. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Robert D. St. Louis

  4. Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, USA

    Greg Schymik

Authors
  1. David Schuff
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  2. Karen Corral
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  3. Robert D. St. Louis
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  4. Greg Schymik
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Correspondence to Karen Corral.

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Schuff, D., Corral, K., St. Louis, R.D. et al. Enabling self-service BI: A methodology and a case study for a model management warehouse. Inf Syst Front 20, 275–288 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-016-9722-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-016-9722-2

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