The Inconvenient Truths of Self-Service Analytics
What every data leader needs to know before chasing self-service
Hi, fellow future and current Data Leaders; Ben here 👋
I’ve been speaking with data leaders and executives for the past few years about how to make data useful. And of course, self-service analytics comes up frequently. Some people believe in it, others don’t. So let’s talk about it!
But before that, if you're a data leader looking to understand what is going on in the broader data world as well as elevate your leadership skills, consider signing up for my 6-Week Data Leaders Playbook Accelerator program that I will be running in September!
Now let’s jump into the article!
Self-service analytics is a hoax. A myth. The so-called holy grail.
If you’ve worked in data long enough, you’ve heard that line.
Maybe you’ve even thought it yourself, like the time your CEO asked for a “quick data pull” despite you building them a perfectly good dashboard that already answered the question.
When I first entered the data world, self-service analytics was everywhere. Tableau was pushing it hard, then Salesforce bought them for $15.7 billion, and every vendor promised it would free analysts from endless requests.
A decade later, we’re still chasing that dragon.
Now the narrative has shifted: dashboards are “dead,” or the problem was that Tableau and Looker just “never did it right.”
Say that self-service is a failure in the wrong room, and someone will tell you, “You were just doing it wrong.”
Wherever you stand on the debate, I want to explore where self-service has struggled, and what might actually work next.
Self-Service’s Inconvenient Truths
Here are a few uncomfortable truths that even the strongest believers in self-service can’t deny:
It’s been over a decade… and companies of all sizes are still struggling to answer basic questions. Instead of fixing the root cause, they just keep migrating tools, hoping the next one will magically solve everything.
Dashboard fatigue is real. Many companies have thousands of dashboards collecting dust, while no one remembers who built them or why.
Executives don’t want “dashboard homework.” Executives don’t want a dashboard with 30 filters that they have to spend an hour configuring correctly.
Sometimes the pursuit of self service in itself is the problem. Instead of making decisions a company will keep pushing to get to some undefined point on a map where they believe self service exists.
The numbers are still hard to find. Leaders continue to complain they can’t locate the “right” metrics, because the same KPI exists in three dashboards with three slightly different definitions.
If a golden process existed, we’d already be using it. There’s no silver-bullet setup for self-service analytics; if there were, it would be industry standard by now.
Excel is still king. Like it or not, the only truly universal self-service analytics tool is a spreadsheet.
