Data Democratization with Microstrategy AI

Enrich traditional self service BI with nearly Out-of-the-Box Artificial Intelligence capabilities

Welcome to TechStation, SDG's dedicated space to keep you up-to-date with all the latest trends and innovations in the industry! In this article, we'll take a look at MicroStrategy Auto and Auto Bot to see how they can help decision-makers in your company extract crucial information from data in a straightforward way.

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Data Democratization is a path whose ultimate goal is to allow anyone (who is eligible to do so) to have self access to corporate information assets, so as to perform analysis and turn data into information without necessarily involving IT.

One of the limiting factors to achieving the goal is the need for technical expertise, sometimes more than minimal, on enterprise data analysis tools.

Evidence of this is provided by the evergreen extensive use of more familiar tools such as Excel to analyze exported data via advanced BI tools.

Sounds like nonsense, right?

And yet it makes sense.

Not all business figures have the opportunity to delve into technical knowledge, especially those figures who often make key business decisions.

Several strategies have been adapted in the past to solve this problem including:

• the introduction of Data Analysts to support the figures dedicated to the business
• the preparation of a variety of high and low level dashboards that answer key questions

Unfortunately, this is not always enough.

Sometimes the answers being sought are not present in existing dashboards or, if they are present, they require digging into the data, selecting and filtering and sorting or, even worse, relating data to each other.

Other times the business requires immediate answers and rapid analysis but for a variety of reasons a Data Analyst cannot always guarantee immediate 24/7 feedback.

But once again technology comes to our aid, this time leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

What is Microstrategy AI?

Microstrategy AI is a set of features based on the use of Large Language Models, pre-trained deep learning models that can recognize, translate, synthesize, and generate text.

How can these capabilities help you in your search for answers in business data?

Simply by allowing you to ask questions and provide answers in natural language as you would with a Data Analyst.

If you have ever happened to:

• analyze a dashboard and need to see a KPI with a different visualization and/or dimensions of analysis
• detect an outlier value and need to understand its origin
• get an analysis of the best and worst on a specific metric
• generate a textual summary of the status of a particular analysis
• analyze the relationship or correlation between two or more values
• save your analysis for the future or share it with others
• having to obtain these analyses in a matter of seconds

and you didn’t know where to get your hands on, today you can do so through a simple chat called Auto.

Auto is your virtual assistant and is available in several places within the tool in the most user friendly manner.

Microstrategy Auto

Auto Answer

Auto Answer is available on dashboards and lets you ask questions about the data inside the dashboard itself.

Once you open a dashboard click on the Bot icon in the upper right corner to access the conversation panel.

Inside Auto will suggest possible questions for you. You will be able to select one of those suggestions or to digit your personal question.

Chatbot can answer to:

• Punctual Questions
• Summary Questions
• What If Analysis

The answer can consist of contextual conversation, visualizations or summaries. Chatbot is able to conversate in all languages.

Answers are limited to the set of data that lies behind the dashboard.

Auto Bot

Auto Bot is the most advanced self service object available in Microstrategy.

Imagine a Sales Bot or a Marketing Bot that can answer to all your questions on sales or marketing data.

This is now possible.

Auto Bot on Mobile

As opposed to Auto Answer, that is available out of the box, Auto Bot needs some setup and just a little bit of IT work.

IT should bring all the necessary data inside the Bot in order for it to be able to answer.

The Bot is fully customizable both in the look/appearance and in the behaviour.

Just for example, a bot can be configured to give more succinct or more extensive answers and express itself in a more or less formal and ironic tone.

So keep in mind that also parameters like these can be altered if needed.

In addition to behaviour, it is also possible to enrich the bot with a knowledge base so that it can know and take into account important business factors when providing answers.

Examples in this regard include providing synonyms and specific terminology or indicating preferred values for a kpi (lower/higher is better/worse).

Some key additional function are:

• Snapshots: this functionality lets you save a snapshot in the dedicated panel to store a specific answer. You can then categorize and organize snapshots.

Snapshot Toggle and Snapshot Panel

• Interpretation: you can trigger this in order to receive a technical explanation of the calculation process and verify the answer underlying logic.

Interpretation of the question giving components used for calculation

Best Practices for Interacting with Auto Bot

• Access the Bot: access your library and find the Bot by name or ask your colleague to share you the link.
• Get info on what you can ask: you can use the “ask about” functionality in order to get info on which dimensions and KPI your analysis can be carried on. An alternative could be to ask straight to the bot as below

Ask About 1

Ask About 2

Ask directly to the Bot

• Ask a Question: ask your question in your own words avoiding the use of technical and specific words. Use text suggestion when available in order to improve accuracy of the answer. Be natural.
• Get an in depth analysis: you can go in depth asking deeper question related to the last answer, here is an example

First Question

Second Question related to the First, Bot answers within the context

• Get an explanation of the answer: ask for key factor contribution to a specific performance

Key Factor Analysis

Conclusion

Microstrategy AI can give a big boost to Data Democratization giving accessibility to everybody to advanced analysis through a simple chatting experience.

All users are now able to carry out self service analysis with a few words and in a few seconds.

Data analysts can be relieved of the burden of having to provide on-demand analysis and focus their efforts on higher value-added tasks.

Auto Answer can speed up your analysis, saving you the time to build grid or charts, filter and going in depth with further analysis building visualizations.

Asking some simple question in your own words may replace all this manual work and shorten the times.

Auto Bot can be viewed as a 24/7 Data Analyst, always ready to answer and give complex analysis in a few seconds, giving also the ability to save and share the result.

By asking the right question AI can detect trend and outlier, helping to discover problems or possible improvement in a very quick way.

Want to set up your own AI Assistant? Contact us!