Organizations today are overwhelmed with data. They invest heavily in sophisticated analytics tools, build intricate data pipelines, and craft beautiful dashboards. Yet, despite all this effort, a common and frustrating problem persists: non-technical users often feel lost without training. They struggle to understand what the numbers mean, which reports to trust, or how to apply insights to their daily work.
This is more than a minor inconvenience. When users are confused, they either avoid data altogether or constantly ping the data team with questions. This turns valuable data professionals into a support desk, diverting them from strategic initiatives. The real challenge is not only about building better dashboards; it is about building better data literacy and confidence among the people who need to use that data every day.
One practical way to solve this is by pairing your data stack with a dedicated community platform. That is exactly why we created our Skool community, Arc Academy for Qlik. It is a space where Qlik users and data teams can learn together, share best practices, and turn confusion into clarity.
You can join here:
Arc Academy for Qlik on Skool
The Real Data Challenge Is Not Dashboards, It’s Training People
Many organizations believe that if they just build enough dashboards, users will magically become data-driven. The reality is far more human. Non-technical users face a specific set of anxieties:
- “I don’t know which report to trust; they all show slightly different numbers.”
- “I’m afraid I’ll pull the wrong number and make a bad decision.”
- “What does this metric actually mean, and how is it calculated?”
- “Where do I even start when I need to find information?”
These anxieties lead to real business impacts. Decisions slow down as people second-guess data or revert to gut feelings. Valuable insights remain locked away in underused reports. The data team is constantly interrupted with repetitive requests, which limits their ability to drive strategic value.
Services like data analytics and data engineering can perfect your data pipelines. But if the people who rely on that data do not feel confident using it, the investment will never fully pay off. That is where a community like Arc Academy for Qlik becomes a force multiplier. It connects people with similar questions and challenges so no one has to figure it out alone.
Why Traditional Training Fails Non-Technical Users
The typical approach to data education often falls short. One-time training sessions, while well-intentioned, rarely stick. Information overload means most details are forgotten within days. Static documentation, whether in PDFs or internal wikis, quickly becomes outdated and is rarely consulted. New hires face a steep learning curve with no easy, centralized way to understand your unique metrics and reports.
This cycle leads to the same questions being asked repeatedly across different channels, creating inefficiency and frustration for both data providers and data consumers.
Here is a simple comparison of the old way versus a community-first approach:
| Area | Traditional Training | Community-First Approach (Arc Academy for Qlik) |
| Content Access | One-off sessions, PDFs | Always-on video, posts, and Q&A |
| New Hire Onboard | Ad hoc explanations | Guided learning paths and pinned lessons |
| Questions | Private DMs and email | Public threads others can learn from |
| Updates | Hard to keep docs in sync | New posts, comments, and notifications |
In Arc Academy for Qlik, questions and answers are shared openly. That means every answer helps dozens or hundreds of people, not just one.
Using Community to Teach Data in Plain Language
A Skool community like Arc Academy for Qlik acts as a dynamic, always-on classroom and support hub for Qlik users and data consumers. It is a place where complex data concepts are broken down into straightforward, plain language explanations.
Inside a community like this, you can expect:
- Short posts explaining key metrics and Qlik concepts in simple terms.
- Screen recordings that walk through real dashboards step-by-step.
- Examples of how different teams use Qlik to solve everyday problems.
The focus is on clarity, not jargon. For organizations working in sectors like government, healthcare, or education, this means explaining metrics that directly relate to your world. For instance, reporting tied to government data analytics services, healthcare analytics, or education analytics can be broken down with relatable examples.
When these explanations live in a community instead of a static document, they can be updated, discussed, and improved over time.
Turning One-Off Questions Into Reusable Learning
One of the biggest wins of a community platform is how it converts individual questions into shared knowledge.
In Arc Academy for Qlik, for example:
- Someone posts a question about a Qlik app, metric, or best practice.
- An expert or another community member shares an answer, often with screenshots or a brief video.
- That thread is now searchable and available to everyone, not just the original poster.
Over time, the most helpful threads can be turned into curated resources, pinned posts, or structured mini-courses. Instead of your data team answering the same question over and over in private channels, the community builds a living knowledge base that keeps getting better.
This “strength in numbers” effect is powerful: each person’s question improves the experience for the whole group.
Designing Spaces Around Real Roles and Use Cases
To make a community useful, it should mirror the way people actually work. Organizing content by tool alone is not enough. It is far more effective to organize by role, workflow, or business problem.
In Arc Academy for Qlik, that might look like:
- Spaces focused on leaders and how they should read executive dashboards.
- Areas where finance or operations teams can dive into KPIs that matter most to them.
- Threads highlighting specific use cases from the public sector, healthcare, or education.
This role-based structure matches how Arc Analytics builds solutions in client environments. Whether you are consolidating data sources or deploying Qlik at scale, your users need to see themselves and their challenges reflected in the way learning is organized.
Measuring the Impact of a Data Community Training
A community should not just feel good; it should deliver results. You can measure the impact of a Skool community like Arc Academy for Qlik by tracking:
- Fewer repetitive questions to the data or BI team.
- More active users in Qlik and other analytics tools.
- Shorter onboarding time for new hires who need to work with data.
- Better alignment on “one version of the truth” for core KPIs.
You can also look at community analytics such as active members, post engagement, and course completion rates. Combined with product usage data, this paints a clear picture of how community participation supports data adoption and better decisions.
How to Get Started Without Overwhelming Your Team
The good news is that you do not have to build your own community from scratch. You can plug into an existing one.
A simple way to start is to join Arc Academy for Qlik:
- Explore real questions other Qlik users are asking.
- Learn from shared examples, templates, and best practices.
- Bring your own questions and challenges and get feedback from both peers and experts.
By joining an established community, your team benefits from a broader network. You are not just learning from your own use cases; you are learning from dozens of organizations that are solving similar problems in different ways. That is the power of strength in numbers.
Here is the link to join:
Arc Academy for Qlik on Skool
Moving Forward: Build Confidence Through Training, Not Just Dashboards
Your data challenges are not just technical; they are human. Tools like Qlik are incredibly powerful, but without confidence and understanding, they will never reach their full potential.
A community like Arc Academy for Qlik gives users a safe, structured, and collaborative environment to learn, ask questions, and grow. It turns your data journey into something shared, not something every team has to figure out on its own.
At Arc Analytics, we help clients build strong data foundations and the human systems that sit on top of them. If you want your investment in Qlik and analytics to translate into real-world adoption, joining a community is one of the fastest ways to accelerate that progress. Join Arc Academy for Qlik today and see how much easier data becomes when you are not learning it alone.