8 Critical Factors To Consider While Selecting The BI Tool

If you are currently looking for a BI solution, you already understand the power of analysing real-time data and executive reports that can instantly show the leaders, the overall health of the business. However, according to Gartner, 70% – 80% BI projects fail. This is because organizations look at current requirements and don’t consider the dynamic business environments to find a solution that is futuristic and scalable.

Given below is a powerful list of eight critical factors you should consider while selecting a BI tool, which if followed through, can ensure you don’t regret your decision ever.

• 1. Data Visualization: Creating powerful data visualization focused on answering business question should be easy, user friendly and the tool should give you the ability to customize the level of access based on roles or functional groups.
• 2. Data Integration and Transformation: Rarely do organizations have their data at a single location. Whilst considering a BI tool, carefully consider the number of data sources and disparate systems you have today and the level of integration and transformation that will be required.
• 3. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Hardware, Software, License, BI Resources, Training, Implementation, Ongoing Support & Maintenance are key contributors to TCO. It is common mistake to make BI tool decision purely based on User License cost alone.
• 4. Ease of User Adoption: Ideally the BI tool adoption should be as easy as installing an app from the app store and get going without any/minimal training. You don’t want to be investing too much time in training users on how to use a complicated BI tool.
• 5. Self-Service: One of the most critical aspect of BI is self-service. You don’t want IT (BI team) to stand between data and decision maker. The tool should empower business users to easily and quickly build their own KPIs with minimal training.
• 6. Mobile Capability: A BI tool should be accessible from any device anywhere. This enables users get the information in real-time and make decisions as and when needed on-the-go. BI tool without great responsive experience is not a good idea.
• 7. Performance: It can be very frustrating to click a dashboard and wait for data to load. Lots of BI tools perform great at smaller data volumes but as the data increases, the performance starts to drop. Project your future data volume needs and ensure that the BI tool is scalable and capable of performing well at large data volumes too.
• 8. Notification Alerts: It is practically impossible to monitor each KPI especially when there are several moving parts. Notification alert enables “management by exception” so the decision makers are notified when set thresholds are breached.

There are many data analysis tools today in the market, so the decision process of selecting one is long and arduous. BI is the brain of the company that would enable better and faster decision making and action. You must get it absolutely right the first time as the rework and course correction in future is very expensive. While the tool is extremely important, the people who manage it are equally critical. If you don’t have the right team with business perspective, knowledge & experience, then you can easily get into issues early on. We offer free one-hour consultancy capsules that can help you make the right decision of selecting a BI tool for your company. To book an appointment, fill in the Contact Us form or reach out to us at info@diacto.com.

– Om Maurya