5 features you should look for while selecting a Business Intelligence tool
The main goal of any BI solution was for all users to access data in a simplified manner within a company which in turn will improve efficiency within the organisation and as a result, increase productivity.
But in reality, are these solutions self-serviceable? Are they being adopted in different companies as expected? Why is Microsoft Excel still being used as the primary tool to analyse data? According to IDC, worldwide revenues for big data and BI solutions will reach $260 billion in 2022. Despite this projected growth and wide propagation of tools like Tableau and Power BI — majority of IT decision makers will choose Excel as the primary tool to analyse their company’s data. So, what’s actually happening at ground level at any company? What should a user look for while selecting a BI Tool?
1. Self-Serviceable
Are dashboard views the same as data access?
To be honest — It’s not the same. With majority BI tools, most business questions require complex SQL queries to answer! This in turn results in a large number of non-technical users being out of the equation or confined to Excel. It is important that business teams should be able to find answers to the questions they ask without being dependent on a handful of skilled users to do it for them. This is where self-service BI solutions come into play.
Any non- technical user shouldn’t have to wait for weeks for any ad-hoc requests to be answered by busy data teams. We have to ensure that the analytics tool we choose should be suitable for the entire organization — not just the data team. This can also save small companies the expense of having to hire and bring in IT-literate staff.
Image generated via ZEPTO
2. Collaboration
Team members must be in sync and communicate across different devices. This is even more important now that more work teams are comprising of remote staff. Everyone needs to be on the same page and be able to see the data that their co-workers are seeing, even as the information is updated in real time. Team members should be able to share charts, dashboards, KPI’s etc. to other users on the platform.
Image generated via ZEPTO
3. Data Insights
Data reveals everything about your demographics. It tells a very meaningful story regarding user behavioral patterns. BI tools help you decipher that story, so you can make educated business decisions moving forward. Also unlike traditional BI tools, AI powered Analytics tools help a user to dig deeper insights into their data. You should be able to generate quick & actionable insights in the form of Charts & Stories.
Image generated via ZEPTO
4. Advanced Predictive Analysis
While the majority of the current BI tools are already capable of drawing conclusions from the assessed data and make assumptions accordingly, predictive analysis is an ever-evolving sub-field of BI. BI tools are now able to work with data sets to drawi multiple possible outcome scenarios, based on the data fed to them.
Image generated via ZEPTO
5. Cost Effective
Last but not least, business intelligence has always been the privilege of corporate giants. It’s not that small companies don’t have a need for BI — it’s just that it has been too expensive to implement for the SMB. However, there are a couple of Self Service Analytics tools that are far more affordable than enterprise solutions for organizations. There’s really no reason why you should have to spend large sums of money on your BI tool.
All images have been generated using ZEPTO.
