Governed AI BI · No hallucinated SQL · Semantic layer first

Governed AI BI. For IT and managers, finance, sales ops, analysts.

Every Excel uploaded, every AI call, every chart, tracked, encrypted, auditable. No SQL, no DAX, no IT ticket. The semantic-layer-first BI that ends shadow Excels and shadow ChatGPT.

zenital selfBI · AI wizard
You
Total revenue
€10.5M
↑ 18% YoY
Avg / month
€878k
↑ 12% vs last
Best month
€1.10M
May

Revenue by month

AI summary · Monthly revenue trend, Jun → May. Q4 grew 18% vs Q3.
The problem

Every mid-sized company is stuck in the same loop.

IT can't keep up.

Power BI requests pile up. Each one takes weeks because requirements are vague and the data needs reshaping. Two engineers, fourteen tickets, no time to improve the warehouse.

Management can't wait.

So they export a CSV. They build it in Excel. They paste confidential data into ChatGPT. There are now two versions of every chart, and IT has no idea what data is leaking.

The result: data dispersion, unclear requirements, no feedback loop, zero governance. AI spend is invisible. Excels live on personal laptops. Nobody is happy. This is the problem zenital selfBI solves.

Before / after

A regional director needs revenue by region this quarter.

Before zenital selfBI
4 weeks
  • Files a request to IT
  • Waits for a clarification meeting
  • Pushes back on the metric definition
  • Gets a final dashboard, already stale
  • In parallel: builds an Excel, mails it around. Two versions, two numbers.
IT sees: 14 tickets in the queue. 2 engineers. No time to improve the warehouse.
After zenital selfBI
3 minutes
  • Opens selfBI
  • Types "Revenue by region this quarter vs last"
  • Chart appears in 4 seconds
  • Adds a filter: "exclude internal sales"
  • Pins it. Shares the link with her team.
IT sees: 47 dashboards built this month. €128 of AI spend across 12 users. The 3 prompts that failed, all gaps in the warehouse.
What IT sees

A real feedback loop, finally.

Every Excel upload, every AI call, every dashboard. Filter by team, user, period. Spot the columns your warehouse should have, straight from how people actually work. Live in /admin today.

  • Org-scoped data sources, connect once, choose which workspaces see it
  • Cost observability, by workspace, user, model, period
  • Excel surveillance, every upload logged with columns and topics
See the IT view
What management does

Talk to your data. Get the answer.

Type a question in plain English. The wizard already knows your business glossary, your aliases, your filters. The chart appears in seconds.

  • Connect any data source, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, BigQuery, Redshift, CSV/Excel
  • AI Wizard, type the question, get the chart
  • Anti–blank canvas, 3 suggestions waiting when you open a dashboard
See the wizard
How we compare

selfBI vs the workarounds you have today.

Most companies juggle two or three of these. zenital selfBI replaces that mix with one governed surface.

Power BI
For data engineers
EVALUATE
SUMMARIZE(
  Sales,
  Sales[Region],
  "Revenue",
  CALCULATE(SUM(Sales[Amount]))
)
Manager files a ticket. Waits 2 weeks.
ChatGPT
Generic AI assistant
Revenue by region last quarter?
I don’t have access to your company’s database. Could you paste the data here?
Manager pastes a CSV. IT has no idea.
Excel + email
The classic workaround
AB
1RegionRevenue
2EMEA412,300
3NA298,500
4=SUM(B2:B…#REF!
Three teams. Three Excels. Three different totals.
zenital selfBI
Governed AI for the whole org
Revenue by region last quarter, exclude internal sales.
EMEA
NA
APAC
LatAm
✓ Used your “internal sales” glossary definition. Pinned to the Sales dashboard.
4 seconds. Governed. Shared with the team.
Power BI
ChatGPT
Excel + email
zenital selfBI
Non-technical users build dashboards
IT sees every prompt, file, cost
No hallucinated SQL
Your KPI definitions are respected
CSV + database in the same workflow
BYOK / AI cost observability per workspace
Audit log of who asked what
Self-host option
Honesty over hype

What we don't do.

Most BI tools over-promise. We'd rather tell you up front.

We don't replace Power BI.

We sit above it as the self-service layer. Some clients replace, others run both.

We don't generate "insights".

We generate charts. Insights are still the human's job.

No predictive analytics.

Not the product. We do BI well, not forecasting, not ML.

No real-time streaming.

Cube caches. Freshness depends on your source, and we tell you when.

No "auto-magic" data modelling.

The semantic model still needs care. zenital builds and maintains it as a service. We don't pretend otherwise.

Questions you'll ask

The honest answers.

Power BI is a tool for IT. Self-service in PBI means handing a SQL-less user a DAX editor, most managers won't. selfBI is built for the SQL-less user. The IT side is the bonus, not the core.

Next step

Two weeks. One of your data sources. Your real workload.

We do a pilot: week 1 we connect a source and build the semantic model. Week 2 your team uses it for real questions. You see, on your data, exactly what we just described.