10 Pointers For Selecting the Right Business Intelligence Tool
Editor’s Note:
Choosing a tool requires knowledge. Choosing the right tool, however, requires experience. With both under his belt, Umesh would like to share 10 pointers with technology-driven organizations for selecting the right Business Intelligence tool as well as the compelling arguments of the significance in integrating it into the bowel of your data-driven culture and strategy.
Umesh Ramakrishnan has 10+ years of work experience in data analytics and have previously worked with multiple startups across South-East Asia. He is currently leading the Corporate Analytics and Business Intelligence team at Traveloka and has built this function from the ground up.
Overview
With the proliferation of technology, data-driven decision making has become an even integral part of many organizations. In fact, a study by EY on how any business can build a successful data strategy through the optics of big data trends & challenges highlighted that 81% of respondents agree that data should be at the heart of all decision-making processes. The fundamental step in data democratization is making sure that data is easily accessible by all users across the company and Business Intelligence (BI) tools play a vital role in that process.
Selecting and identifying the right BI tools that fit into your organization's data strategy can be such a daunting and tiring process. Although Gartner does an annual review to release their Magic Quadrant for BI tools, which evaluate a long list of software vendors based on an extensive list of evaluation criteria, it’s more aligned to the needs of larger and established companies but for a startup that is growing at multiple of X every year. This may not be the best way to evaluate and not a go-to reference point.
Based on my past experience, I would like to provide some insights and a list of criteria to evaluate a prospective tool for your BI ecosystem. Below are the 10 major criteria and list of functionalities that I’ve identified as key for a startup’s current and future organizational needs:
- Core Functionalities
These are basic functionalities required by the analyst to produce value for your business. Almost all top tier BI tools in the market offer these core functionalities:
- Pre-built connectors to all major data source (Cloud Databases, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Excel, Google Sheet, etc)
- Third-party applications connectors (Salesforce, SAP, Google Analytics, Anaplan, Quickbooks, etc)
- Data profiling
- Data Preparation / Wrangling / Blending
- Interactive Reports
- Geospatial Analysis
- Complex Visualizations (Box Plot, Funnel, and Sankey Chart)
- Advance analytics (Forecasting, Control Chart, and Cohort Analysis)
2. Discoverability & Collaboration
Creating reports is one thing. But ensuring business users can make the best use of it is another (the challenging part). As your company marches towards the state of democratizing data, the ability for business users to play around with the dataset or reports is vital. Looking from your business user perspective, the following key features are required in a BI tool:
- Downloadable reports in various formats (Excel, PDF, or Presentation)
- Shareable and searchable reports as well as datasets
- Commentable reports with support for discussions
- Schedulable alerts and triggers
3. Performance & Scalability
Other important criteria that you need to ensure is that the tool you select not only serves your current needs but also has the ability to scale up as your business grows. When the tool becomes part of the central ecosystem, you need to make sure that it’s able to maintain its service level admirably and consistently. Some key considerations are:
- Data Extraction time
- Dashboard loading time
- Caching and scheduled refresh
- Perceived UX Performance (Perceived — as it’s opinion based)
4. Governance
Although you should encourage users to consume and play around with as many datasets as possible, you also need to have a properly defined user access control and permissions in place to ensure the confidentiality of the datasets / reports. In addition, you may also want to consider introducing the best practice from the software development life cycle into your BI tool of version control and peer review. Such an arrangement will help you have a single source of truth and standardized metrics across the organization. Consider the following functionalities for implementing governance:
- Single Sign-On
- Role, Group, and Individual-level access control
- Datasets configuration versioning
- Peer review system for changes
5. Ease of Implementation
In addition to product features, you may also want to evaluate the tool on its perceived level of complexity as a steep learning curve will increase the friction for adoption. Without a wide acceptance of the tool, your BI strategy will eventually fail despite having an initiative that looked good on paper. Three important components that will eventually get you to a state of wider adoption are:
- Tool deployment complexity
- Simpler user onboarding
- Perceived difficulty in mastering the tool
6. Mobile Devices Support
As we become more mobile, having a BI tool that can support the core functionalities in mobile devices is gaining a lot of traction. Lots of executives prefer this option as they can access the reports / dashboards on the go instead of logging into the browser version.
7. Embedded Analytics
In recent times as many organizations are embracing a data-driven culture, embedded analytics are becoming a key feature to enable companies to share data resolutely with external parties in real-time.
8. Third-party Application Integration
BI tools are evolving from being just a visualization tool to more of a system integration platform. The ability to work / integrate with other tools will increase the adaptability (as well as versatility) of the BI tools within the organization and its many departments in turn are willing to embrace it to secure a wider acceptance
9. Product Support
No matter how many exciting features your preferred BI tools have, their competitors will eventually catch up. So, the biggest differentiator will be the support. Most companies view Software as a Service purchase as transactional but you need to view this as an opportunity to build relationships for you’re betting on their success and would like to grow hand in hand with you. So, choosing a vendor who is willing to work closely with your team is an important criteria. Consider the following aspects:
- Public product roadmap
- Local / Regional support
- User / Community support forum
- Client references
10. Cost / Price
Most startups operate on a tight budget and having a disciplined approach to your spending will help build a sustainable business. You need to look at both direct and indirect costs associated with the tool and categorize them accordingly. This will also help you go beyond the numbers given by the vendors and understand the actual cost to implement and maintain the BI infrastructure. Three major cost components are:
- Platform & License Cost
- Support Package Cost
- Maintenance Cost (including the resource cost for maintenance)
Lastly, being a technology company, it is tempting, understandably, to build your own tool and in some cases, what many resourceful companies that have unique requirements prefer. But as a start-up, you have to decide if it’s worth focusing the already limited energy and resources on building something from scratch that’s not your core product / service when you can buy the best in class tools off the shelf instead. The everlasting mantra don’t reinvent the wheel applies aptly here.
Good luck in selecting the right tool for your organization. See you in another post. In the meantime, stay safe & healthy.
