Sigma Powers a Community-driven Approach to Analytics and BI

A major part of data analysis is the ability to visualize information as charts and graphs that better illustrate the story behind the data. Effective data visualizations help people understand and communicate insights so they can make better decisions in the context of their business needs and goals.

Data visualization is also a key component of community-driven analytics, an increasingly critical approach to business intelligence focused on empowering teams to share, amplify, and accelerate one another’s data insights. Community-driven analytics is achieved when every team member — regardless of their technical ability — is able to contribute their domain expertise to the company’s business intelligence initiative and collaborate to fuel faster, more effective data-driven decisions.

Many companies have already joined the collaborative analytics movement, which enables teams to share reports, coordinate analyses, and communicate insights. Community-driven analytics takes these efforts to the next level by extending relevant data, analyses, and insights across departments, partners, customers, applications, ecosystems, and even entire industries.

This requires an analytics and business intelligence (A&BI) solution that takes a truly modernized approach to data governance by making data accessible and approachable for everyone while upholding strict compliance and security standards.

This week, Sigma is excited to share several enhancements to our A&BI platform that continue to deliver on the promise of community-driven analytics. Unlike other solutions, Sigma transforms data exploration and analysis into an iterative process that equips everyone in an organization with:

• Direct, real-time, guided access to data insights and the cloud data warehouse
• A single platform for both SQL fans and spreadsheet lovers to work together
• A dynamic source of shared truth where data is always current, accurate, and in context
• Role-based tools for data exploration, modeling, and enrichment
• Team workspaces where relevant data is made readily available
• The ability to reuse and repurpose models and analyses across teams and applications
• Pre-built templates for the most common BI use cases

• The ability to pull third-party data sets from Snowflake’s Data Marketplace directly into analyses

And now, Sigma is giving teams the ability to more easily interact with visualizations and dig into underlying dashboard data, as well as embed these visualizations directly in the context of their business workflows.

Live, real-time and guided access to data for everyone

Many data visualization tools provide people access to status or limited views of data that answer the first question someone might have.. But what happens when these dashboards require a refresh, or inevitably give way to follow-up questions? Line of business leaders must wait for their data team to update the analysis and provide a new dashboard — a process that can take weeks.

At Sigma, we believe the organizations that derive the most value from data analytics are the ones that work iteratively across business and technical teams. Unlike other solutions, Sigma gives everyone, not just data experts, the ability to explore, model, visualize, and enrich their data in real-time, at cloud-scale, so they can find the answers they need to drive real competitive advantage in seconds.

With Sigma’s latest update, users can easily build and manage custom dashboards using worksheet visualizations, click directly into filters and parameters to explore data from the dashboard, and control how often dashboard data is automatically refreshed. And the best part is you’re only one click away from diving into the underlying dashboard worksheet to easily explore follow-up questions and update the visualization as business needs change. All this without having to call in the data team!

Also in the latest release we’ve improved dashboard layout flexibility, added new formatting capabilities, improved collaborative sharing and editing, and updated publishing to productivity applications like Google Drive.

To learn more about these dynamic dashboard features, visit our help docs.

Put your analysis in context with application embedding

Embedded analytics functionality allows businesses to extend the value of their data and insights by putting real-time, endorsed data analyses directly within business workflows. With Sigma’s new application embedding capabilities, users can now embed dashboards and visualizations into internal and external applications and authenticate users through those applications.

Embedded dashboards can also be customized according to each user’s needs and data permissions directly from Sigma, including the ability to see or change specific data views in the dashboard or visualization. Meeting decision-makers where they are with relevant analyses fuels faster and more informed decision making by eliminating the need to switch between applications to access the data they need.

With Sigma’s Application Embedding capability, we were able to create data-rich and interactive dashboards that show our customers all of the key metrics they need for daily decision-making.

Sigma’s application embedding offers the ability to further extend data outside the organization to partners and customers for a truly community-driven approach. “With Sigma’s Application Embedding capability, we were able to create data-rich and interactive dashboards that show our customers all of the key metrics they need for daily decision making and embed them directly into our proprietary products without any interruption to the service we provide to our customers,” shares Chris Lambert, CTO at Payload.

To learn more about application embedding with Sigma, visit our help docs.

Start Adopting a Community-driven Approach to Data Analytics Today

Taking a community-driven approach to data analytics empowers teams to share valuable insights, build on each other’s analyses, and collaborate to make better decisions faster. But it takes time, a conscious and deliberate cultural shift, and the right tools to make it a reality in every organization.

If you’re a current Sigma customer, simply log into your Sigma account to start using both of these community-driven features today. Reach out directly to your Sigma rep with any questions.