This article was co-written by Manish Garg & Hakeem Lawrence
A common challenge with many business intelligence tools is building trust, often when there isn’t a data model and when various BI tools throughout the organization provide conflicting results.Â
We’ve all encountered this scenario: two groups reporting on the same data but arriving at two different results. Which group is correct? It often requires significant time to identify which metric is accurate, but by the time you’ve solved the tactical problem, you have a strategic problem: no one trusts the data, so no one uses it.
The root cause lies in a lack of standardization and governance to establish a single, reliable source of truth. This results in redundant work, wasted time, and—most importantly—a decline in data trust.
That’s where Omni steps in.Â
Omni is a business intelligence and embedded analytics platform designed to balance ease of use for all users to interact with data their way and the governance of a built-in data model to ensure trust. Omni delivers self-service and higher adoption rates while ensuring consistency and trust throughout the entire development and analytics cycle.
In this blog, we’ll explore:
Why Omni is an essential tool for modern analytics
Key features that set Omni apart
Who Omni is best suited for
What is Omni Analytics?
Omni is a direct-query BI platform designed for fast, self-service analytics. It combines the flexibility of a spreadsheet-like experience with the power of advanced business intelligence.
Why Choose Omni?
Easy for Everyone – A simple, intuitive interface makes data analysis accessible, even for non-technical users.
Self-Service Analytics – Build reports and dashboards without coding, just like working in a familiar spreadsheet by writing Excel formulas.
Seamless Data Connections – Connect to multiple sources effortlessly with built-in integrations.
Enterprise-Ready – A shared data model ensures accuracy, consistency, and scalability for teams of all sizes.
Smart Visualizations – Turn raw data into interactive charts & reports with one-click ease.
What Can You Do With Omni?
Organizations of all sizes use Omni to transform their data into actionable insights. Key capabilities include developing data models, performing dynamic calculations, and building interactive visualizations and dashboards. Let’s explain how these features work and why they matter to your business. Â
Build Robust Data Models
Omni uses a layered approach to modeling data for analytic solutions.
This approach is broken down into three key layers:
Raw Database: Focuses on raw data organization, including tables, columns, relationships, constraints, and views.
Governed Data Model: This model builds on the schema to define hierarchies, business metrics, and contextual relationships. It helps define a single source of truth that multiple reports and teams can rely on across the organization.
Ad Hoc Workbook Model: This model provides flexibility for one-off queries and exploration but can also make changes that can be promoted to the shared data model.
Omni’s architecture enables items defined by subject matter experts in the Workbook Model—such as frequently used custom measures or fields—to be evaluated and integrated into the Semantic/Shared Model. This feedback loop ensures that valuable metrics and objects developed in individual workbooks can be standardized and reused across the organization, supporting consistency and reducing redundant effort.
In addition, Omni is the only BI tool that offers bi-directional integration with dbt to enhance the data modeling workflow. Schema refreshes and automatically syncs changes made in dbt, ensuring that updates to transformations and models are promptly reflected in Omni without requiring repetitive work across dbt and your BI tool.Â
dbt context and metadata, such as field descriptions and foreign key constraints, are pulled into Omni, streamlining processes, reducing manual work, and making it easier for users to uncover relevant context.Â
Omni also supports dynamic schema switching, enabling teams to transition across different environments (e.g., development, staging, production). This flexibility improves collaboration between engineering and analytics teams, promoting agility and efficiency throughout the data lifecycle.
Create Dynamic Calculations With Point and Click UI or Excel-like Formulas
In addition to building trust through a shared data model that’s easy to build and integrates with dbt, Omni focuses on usability by enabling AI, Excel-style calculations, and point-and-click options for interacting with data.Â
Omni calculations are formulas that use Excel syntax, so it’s easy for anyone comfortable with Excel or spreadsheet calculations to start. This accessibility empowers users across skill levels—especially business users without advanced technical expertise—to build custom calculations, metrics, and insights directly within the platform.Â
Omni provides a calculation AI bot where you can type a prompt using natural language for those familiar with Excel but who don’t have the formulas memorized. Omni will generate the formula for you!
Point and Click Measures Through The UI
To make it even easier, Omni took common calculations like sum, average, and percentile and made selecting them from the UI easy.
Measures Using Excel-Like Formulas
Anyone familiar with Excel reduces the learning curve, enabling faster adoption of the analytics platform. This allows business users to independently create and modify metrics without relying on technical teams, fostering a culture of self-service. It also allows teams to iterate on analyses quickly, adapting to new questions or business needs more quickly.
Create Compelling Data Visualizations and Dashboards
To share the findings from analyses, Omni allows users to easily transform data into meaningful, interactive visuals that drive decision-making.Â
Omni’s Key Visualizations Features Include:
Out-of-the-Box Visuals:
The platform includes a rich collection of pre-built visualizations, such as:KPI Cards for at-a-glance metric tracking.
Pivot Tables for dynamic data slicing and dicing.
Line Charts and other standard charts for trend and time-series analysis.
These visuals enable users to quickly create impactful dashboards with less effort.
Customizable Visualizations with Vega-Lite:
Advanced users can create fully tailored visuals using Vega-Lite code, a declarative visualization grammar that allows:Fine-tuning of chart aesthetics and layouts.
Adding interactivity and custom logic for advanced use cases.
Markdown Integration:
The platform also supports Markdown capabilities, enabling users to:Add descriptive text, headers, and lists directly into dashboards for context and explanations.
Embed dynamic links, highlights, and formatting for better storytelling alongside visuals.
By combining pre-built visuals, full customization through Vega-Lite, and Markdown support for added context, the platform empowers users to create highly effective, visually rich, and self-explanatory dashboards.
Once you create the dashboard, Omni also makes it easy to share it with anyone with the correct permissions, including via scheduled email delivery for reports that need regular monitoring.Â
Who Should Use Omni?
Business Subject Matter Experts:
Omni allows Business Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who are trying to do their jobs better. Omni’s easy-to-use UI helps SMEs validate and enhance data interpretations and metrics, bridging the gap between raw data and strategic decisions. SMEs can also collaborate with other roles, such as analytic engineers, to define business rules, metrics, and data models. This ensures that analytics outputs resonate with the organization’s goals and priorities.
Analytic Engineers:
Analytic engineers use Omni to build and maintain scalable, governed data models and workflows. They design frameworks that improve data consistency, quality, and organizational performance. Engineers can integrate complex workflows into Omni while collaborating with SMEs to meet diverse requirements. They also focus on automation and optimization, reducing manual effort and ensuring the analytics platform remains agile.Â
Executives:
Executives leverage Omni’s dashboards to access high-level insights into business performance. These dashboards are designed to provide clear, actionable metrics tailored to strategic decision-making. Using Omni, executives can quickly identify trends, opportunities, and challenges, enabling faster responses to business needs. The platform also allows them to drill down into key metrics when needed, enabling the transition from a descriptive-analytical approach to a diagnostic approach.Â
How are phData’s Clients using Omni?
While our partnership with Omni is new, we’ve had early success helping clients leverage the Omni platform. Recently, we helped one of our clients successfully migrate Tableau dashboards to Omni, replicating all features while enhancing performance and flexibility.Â
Here’s how we did it:
Data Connections: Leveraged Snowflake & Redshift connections in Omni to create optimized data topics (by using joins and relationships).
Dashboard Replication: Seamlessly recreated all Tableau dashboards, maintaining identical look and functionality.
Advanced Functionality: Implemented equivalent features, including:
Parameters for user-driven analysis.
LOD (Level of Detail) calculations achieved through separate custom sqls.
Data blending using the
XLOOKUPfunction.Page navigation through Markdown.
Field Control to change the dimensions dynamically.
Closing
Omni is transforming the way businesses approach analytics and business intelligence. With its focus on simplicity, collaboration, and governance, Omni supports organizations in unlocking actionable insights and driving success.
Interested in Working with Omni?
While Omni is the new kid on the block when it comes to phData’s analytics capabilities, we’ve had some compelling success with the platform for our customers. If you’d like to learn more about our work with Omni and how it can be helpful to your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out.
