Download: BI tool evaluation form

One of the more frequent questions in analytics projects is “What BI tool should we use?”. And too often this question is answered without giving it too much consideration. The way we approach the question, we like to set a few main points clear before getting into detailed tool evaluation:

1. There is no catch-all perfect tool for every situation. Yes, there are clear leaders in the market, frequently mentioned by analysts and often pushed by various resellers. And yes, there is a number of trendy tools that are quickly gaining ground and that a lot of customers are raving about. But there is no single tool that is an answer for all the companies, departments and use cases.
2. Majority of the tools can handle most analytics tasks rather well. BI market has developed tremendously over the last few years and main competitors today all have similar main capabilities. Multiple data sources, self-service analytics, calculations, data visualizations are unlikely to become showstoppers for any of the tool, unless you choose a very niche player.
3. Choosing the right tool can ease deployment and increase adoption. Although all tools can perform main BI tasks relatively well today, each of them have their strengths and weaker points. Understanding at an early stage what your specific needs are and choosing appropriate tool can significantly improve adoption rates as users recognize that their needs are being met.
4. Single BI tool across whole organization might not be the best route for all. Because of the above point, it is important to recognize that different departments, teams and scenarios could have differing tool priorities and preferences. While there are genuine benefits of having a single BI platform across organization – including single source of truth, know-how sharing, economies of scale and others – it is worth considering whether there are significant differences between use cases which would justify deployment of a few tools.

As you notice, a recurring theme in above points is recognizing business needs. This does not mean subjective preferences for a specific tool (e.g. “we have always worked with…” or “our IT head has good/bad experience with…”) but rather analysis of various use cases and what aspects of analytics are priorities for different teams.

To better identify these needs and make tool selection a more objective exercise we recommend discussing and listing all your business requirements. The key here is to think specifically about varying needs of your business and capture them as use cases rather than software features. We tend to group them under 7 broad categories and use an adjustable evaluation form which you can download here to capture them:

1. Input data. Anything related to data ingestion goes here. Think about types of data sources that you use. Do you need every user to add their own data sources? Do you tend to use the latest new technology to capture and store data?
2. Analyst-friendly. How technically advanced are your users and does the tool match this level? How much will they need to build their own calculations and formulas? Do you need full self-service for every user? What is the learning curve to start using the tool?
3. Agile analysis and data discovery. Ability to go from one level of analysis to a different is more important to some companies than others. Will your users need to go from high level summary down to the underlying transaction details? Will you need built-in statistical features or focus on the past?
4. Storytelling. Analytics is not only about making your analysis but also about presenting and sharing your findings with others. Does the tool enable your users to build the visuals that they need? How easy is it to share outcomes with other users – and non-users?
5. Operationalization of data. Similarly to Input data section, this is talking about the output side. What integrations with other tools will you need? Do you frequently need to build in your analysis into Office tools? Will you need to embed the data into 3rd party applications?
6. Governance. With growing amount of data, managing it becomes increasingly crucial topic. How will you manage the trade-off between allowing users answer their own questions and ensuring these answers align when they are asked by different people? Does the tool cater for today’s data protection and security requirements?
7. Enterprise-ready. As your company is growing and the needs are changing, BI tool needs to adapt accordingly. Will the tool be able to cope with amount of data and users that you will have in 5 years? How does it integrate with other tools that you use, e.g. Active Directory?

Note that depending on your company some of these will have bigger priority over others. After all the requirements are listed, go through it again and prioritize them – scale of 1-5 or High-Medium-Low would work. If there are few significantly different use cases, it is worth creating separate evaluation criteria lists or prioritizations for them.

We at Juzacon can help you with understanding your business needs and evaluating BI tool capabilities against them. Differently from many other consultancies we are software agnostic which means that we do not try to push a specific BI tool due to licensing agreements etc – we always help you choose what is right for your situation. Let’s talk about your analytics project and see how we can help.