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Which Business Intelligence Solution Is The Easiest To Learn & Use?
Part II — Adoption & Support
So far, hundreds of people read the first article and voted. It is a great start to this year’s tournament. ThoughtSpot and Qlikview are on a tear. Support for Power BI and Tableau was a little weak. Do these solutions really not provide the same level of access? That poll will remain open a little while longer.
Business Intelligence Adoption is just Software Adoption by another name and perhaps several layers thick. Or at least that is where the popular wisdom would take you…
We will make a quick stop there and move on to other more recent and interesting factors.
In Business Intelligence, the typical software adoption curve applies across numerous layers — industries, companies, departments, and people.
But with BI solutions, even that is a level too shallow. Adoption applies to both the tool (developers) and the dashboards, reports, or views (clients/users). Further, most business intelligence offering go deep. You can call it “upsell” but most solutions offer levels of functionality and most business tend to iterate through the adoption curve.
So what makes a BI Solution the easiest to adopt and use?
Learning Curve>
I have piloted many a report migration in the last two decades. Although, fewer than any of my piers in the same time frames. For decades, companies were happy to jump from one solution to the next chase small incremental improvements. Analysts were happy to add another technology to their resume. Only… few of those early solutions remain. If they are still on your resume, you may be wasting some ink.
For companies, this was wasteful too. All of that migration required the investment of time and resources to overcome the learning curve. A steep curve or one requiring too much time is a huge impediment to adoption. Of our four competitors, Tableau is probably best known for ease of learning.
Ease of Integration>
For years, I cringed when I heard the buzzword “proprietary storage”. It translated to “IT will never adopt this”. I cringed when IT told me they were bringing something that would “replace spreadsheets”. It meant “Finance will never adopt this” or anybody else for that matter.
BI solutions with the easiest adoption curves do not force massive change. They may empower it, but they don’t require it. If I have to re-engineer my warehouse, change all of my processes, and re-train my entire business at a level that requires a PhD in behavioral science… adoption is going to be difficult.
For the most part, few solutions are that drastic any longer, though a few linger. Almost all solutions now integrate with existing security, existing data storage, and existing business tools. The latter means Excel and Outlook and that gives an advantage here to Microsoft Power BI.
Community & Support>
In the old days, you hired consultants. Sometimes you still should. But these days, some solutions make adoption easy via massive online communities and user support. In fact, the size of a user community may be one of the single best indicators of which software you should choose — Business Intelligence or otherwise.
As BI Madness has proven over the past three seasons, one solution has a huge advantage in the engagement of their community — Qlik. Others are starting to follow, but strong support and community platform success is not an overnight thing — it has its own adoption curve.
A Better Interface>
Plain English. Natural Languge. NoSQL… no coding. It has all been a dream for a very long time. Hell, it is the stuff of science fiction. Ask the question — get the answer.
What could be easier? What could create better adoption? But can it keep it. Whether you want to go to this extreme or just evaluate how user friendly the interfaces of any business intelligence solution — it definitely matters. ThoughtSpot, among our competitors, has a clear edge here. Though the friendliness of any user experience is highly dependent on those who use the tool and develop the final interface. Some tools just make it easier than others.
Four strong arguments, but perhaps you have more. Feel free to share them in the comments below. But more importantly — now is the time to vote. Use the link below and make your opinion known… anonymously, of course. Tell us which solution you believe creates better access, better democratization, and builds the better culture.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for our third round — coming Thursday. And stay with us throughout March Madness to see how each of these solutions fair. Finally, if you think another solution entirely is better at access — leave that in the comment below as well. We love to hear your feedback!
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