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Everyone Wants Self-Serve Analytics. Few Get It Right.

Four people in a meeting room analyzing charts on a screen. Laptops and documents are visible. Mood is focused and professional.
... but can you export to Excel?

Self-serve analytics is one of those goals that sounds universally good.


“Let’s give business users access to their own insights.”
“Let’s reduce the backlog for the data team.”
“Let’s unlock speed and scale.”

And on paper, it makes total sense.


So the company launches a shiny new dashboard.


There’s a rollout plan. Some training. A few cheers in the kickoff call.


And then… things get quiet.


The numbers don’t quite match what the execs expected.

The filters are confusing.

No one’s quite sure what “active customer” means.


A few weeks later, someone asks, “Can I export this to Excel?”


That’s usually when you know adoption isn’t going as planned.



The problem isn’t the platform


We’ve got great tools. BI platforms have never been more polished or powerful.


But even the best tool won’t help if no one trusts the data or knows how to get what they need from it.


Here’s what we see all the time:


  • If people don’t trust the numbers, they won’t use the tool.

  • If it doesn’t answer real business questions, it’s just decoration.

  • If it feels like work, they’ll find a workaround. (Spoiler: it’s usually Excel.)


And here’s the real issue:

Most self-serve tools are designed around the data, not the people who need to use it.



What works instead


Start small. Pick a real problem, not a dashboard.


Work with the team that owns it.

Build something fast.

Make sure it actually gets used.

Then build from there.


Self-serve doesn’t fail because people don’t want it.


It fails because the design assumes too much and listens too little.



At Fuse, we believe in making data strategy real.

If your self-serve effort has stalled or never quite landed, let’s talk.


 
 
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