25 January 2023

No-Code Analytics Solutions – What Are They and Why Do You Need Them?

Like every other area of technology, analytics and data science are bound to evolve as well — the latest development in the field being the no-code evolution.

Organizations typically face challenges enabling analytics effectively due to needing the right coding knowledge, which increases their dependency on specialized resources, costing more time and money in return.

At To-Increase, we offer no-code analytics solutions built within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management (F&SCM), which are easy to use, and users do not require any technical knowledge to operate them.

In this blog, we take you through the no-code philosophy and how our analytics and business intelligence (BI) solutions are developed around it to make it easier for businesses to draw faster and more accurate insights to achieve better outcomes.

Why are we moving toward no-code?

Before we look into why we are moving toward no-code analytics solutions, let's understand what we mean by no-code.

The idea of no-code came into light to simplify various processes for companies and users, like offering drag-and-drop code bits to enable users to create their websites or even create applications without having much coding knowledge. This brings about a technological revolution where a company’s technical requirements, updates, and concerns can be easily handled independently and in less time.

In terms of analytics, the approach makes use of templates, logical sequences, and plug-and-play capabilities showcased in a graphical user interface (UI) to manage and modify the data as needed. Eliminating the need for any coding expertise, anyone (even non-technical individuals) can perform data science tasks, such as exports, manipulations, cleaning, and transformations. This allows users to focus on logic and insights instead of the complexity of writing code to execute analytics.

Therefore, the whole no-code analytics philosophy allows teams and organizations to accelerate their speed to achieving analytics and parallelly save costs when it comes to having dedicated resources to execute data tasks – making way for the move toward analytics-as-a-service.

How do To-Increase’s analytics solutions incorporate the no-code philosophy?

To help you understand better, let’s take an example of the data extraction process and how you can leverage a no-code tool.

The problem

Typically, data provided with the applications or that can cater to every company’s needs is difficult to attain. Also, building and creating reports/reporting packages for each client is just not feasible. In this case, the only way to access the data is by giving users entry to the database or providing them with the data dump and then writing the required code. With F&SCM, the database is on the cloud; however, it is owned by Microsoft, which is another challenge. Additionally, allowing users to access the transaction database is not a good practice. So, now, how do you get the data out? For this, you need dedicated developers who write the necessary code to export the required data and bring it to their local environment. Moreover, with constant changes made by Microsoft to the specifications or rules, the previously written code becomes useless, which means rewriting the code and increasing dependency on the developer.

The solution

Now, using our Data Modeling Studio, embedded in the Dynamics 365 F&SCM cloud, to export data or select any additional fields in a table or add new ones, you do not require any code. Even if it is deployed on particular client premises, the solution does not need to be upgraded, as it automatically manages that. As a user, all you need to do is select the columns/fields you want and add them to the data set for further processing or storage. If you are going to export the data, then it is just an easy click and drop, where the particular data set would need to be deployed and then exported – all this with a few clicks. Therefore, even with constant changes that occur, you do not have to edit or rewrite the code; there is an easy user interface (UI) to take care of that.

This is just the first step to realizing analytics; the no-code concept applies through every step of achieving analytics in Dynamics 365 with our modern analytics and BI solutions. With these at hand, getting insights does not have to be too frustrating. You can focus on your core business operations instead of spending hours figuring out how to get the right data or waiting for developers to do it for you. The setup is quick and only takes a while, instead of the days/weeks it generally does, and zero coding is required. Not just that, enabling end-to-end analytics means you also get to easily visualize the data in the form of dashboards and reports, which can be handled even by functional business users without much effort.

How can no-code analytics solutions help you?

While the BI world moves towards the no-code movement and self-service analytics, it is time you step up your data game to remain competitive and relevant. With the increased need and growth for data science projects, no-code analytics will not only be able to keep up with the ever-increasing demands but also aid data teams in enhancing their productivity by automating recurring and time-consuming tasks. And for those without a background in data science or technical know-how, no-code platforms simplify the use of tools with their drag-and-drop functionality so they can easily carry out data tasks.

For companies, even the smaller ones, this means they can uncover meaningful insights into their data, which would otherwise prove to be expensive to stay in the race.

If you are looking to invest in modern no-code analytics and BI solutions but need help getting started, here is an ebook created in collaboration with Microsoft that can give you deeper insights into the changing world of analytics.

The ebook covers: