Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 5
Jun 4, 2025
When evaluating Business Intelligence (BI) tools, one of the key considerations is an intuitive interface that enables both technical and non-technical users to easily build reports. A good BI tool should connect seamlessly to a wide range of data sources, including databases, cloud applications, and spreadsheets. It should also offer a flexible variety of charts and graphs to suit different business needs. Additionally, BI tools must be capable of handling large datasets and scaling with the organization’s growth.
Search for a product comparison in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
When selecting BI Tools, seamless data integration capabilities are crucial since they enable you to combine data from various sources efficiently. User-friendly dashboards facilitate easy navigation and interpretation of data, empowering users to make data-driven decisions quickly. Real-time analytics provide immediate insights into changing data trends, ensuring timely adjustments to strategies.
Advanced reporting allows businesses to generate comprehensive and customizable reports that meet specific analytical needs. Scalability is vital, enabling the system to grow alongside the business without loss of performance. Security features are essential to protect sensitive information and ensure compliance with standards such as GDPR and HIPAA. These tools should facilitate efficient decision-making and improve tactical and strategic initiatives.
The tool should have an intuitive interface and easy to use tool. It should seamlessly integrate with multiple data sources like database/clouds/API's etc.It also should have advanced visualization capabilities, customizable dashboards, and user-friendly reporting features.
Gestor de Capacidad at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 4, 2018
It is really difficult to choose the right one, in my experience, the most important thing is not the tool that we choose. The most important thing is to design the correct scope, what we need to give us the tool based on two factors, the data we want to obtain and for whom that data will be. If a good approach is made, the chosen one will be the correct one.
Executive Vice President at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Dec 10, 2015
Total cost of ownership is often overlooked during BI product selection. Cheap products do not equal cheap ownership experiences, whether it is missing functionality which must be provided by additional products, poor integration of modules which causes duplication of effort, weak support from the vendor, high cost of maintenance or constant changes to the product portfolio.
The key factors to consider are:
Is this product right for the intended user-base? It should not be necessary to purchase one product for IT, one for business analysts and one for 'end-users'. There are considerable cost savings associated with using a single platform (not a single vendor with many products they have built or bought).
Does the product have the depth of functionality needed, and foreseeably anticipated?
Is that functionality accessible? Can an expert easily access complex, deep functionality, without the occasional or new user being overwhelmed by the interface?
Can it reach all the necessary data sources? Both inside and outside the corporation.
How fast is the user experience, both in developing reports and dashboards and in retrieving the data? Speed of both allows iterative learning and development by new and occasional users, while ensuring high productivity for expert users.
Does it work with our real world data? Too often evaluation of products still relies on superficial test on restricted volumes of data, or the lower complexity data as "it would take too long to build a fully representative testing environment" - big mistake. Identify the product(s) you believe are suitable and then bear the cost of proving they can deliver in your own use case. Too often a poor acquisition is followed by increasing spend to "make it work", when money spent earlier on selecting and proving the right tool would lead to much lower overall cost of ownership and more importantly early success and hence ROI.
Does the company have a history of good backward compatibility? You will build a vast amount of intellectual property with a BI tool. You will become dependent on the insight it provides your organization. So investigate how well you chosen product has allowed users to migrate that IP forward through new revisions of their products. Rewriting IP is a good opportunity to clean it up and start over, but it's a massive unnecessary expense if you have built what you need and it is the vendor forcing you to rewrite your work.
Use case! What and or for whom are you trying to provide reporting capabilities to and from what applications and data sources. What are the skill levels of these users - basic business users or analysts. Ease of use should be top of the list as well as a quality customer support experience.
There are many choices today around BI solutions (embedded, self-service, etc.) and finding the right one depends upon answering these questions.
Director of BI / Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 20
Aug 7, 2014
Key Evaluation Points for BI Tools:
1) Ease of use – Self-service analytics and data exploration, End-user report consumption and Time to develop new reports
2) User Interface and Visualization effectiveness – If it does not look good business will not use it
3) Styles of BI Supported – Scorecards Dashboards, Operational Reports, OLAP Reporting, Predictive Analysis, Notification and Alerting
4) License/TCO – Open Source vs Enterprise Software – support and maintenance structure – development and administration costs, environment deployment constraints, admin tools
5) Performance and data scalability – Depends on the business requirements and data volume
6) Data source connectivity – Depends on the source systems that need to be integrated and backend data integration
7) Security – Authentication, Authorization, Application, Object and Data level security
8) Extensibility and API/SDK – If integration with external applications is required
9) Feature Set/Product Roadmap – scope of product features, speed of platform innovation
Most folks tend to think of UI and the flashy, sexy stuff. However, experience has proven that adopting a platform approach is key to success - a Platform that can access any data source and provide capabilities for internal and external users from the same platform, and not merely serve as a data visualization tool. The ability to do disconnected analytics cannot be discounted; Further having a platform that does NOT mandate creating a data warehouse as a prerequisite; i.e. It shoild have the ability to access operational data sources with minimal impact to the back-end systems.
Manager, Business Intelligence at a consumer goods company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
May 23, 2014
I believe you have to match product capabilities to company BI strategy first and then consider infrastructure standards and internal competencies. if you do these things you should get value. The type of BI solution is important but don't be fooled by the "it's all about data visualization or big data". it is not in most organizations...
"Time to insight" is very important for me. Since the business questions arise non stop and need fast responses, going from raw data to answer a business question in the lesser time possible, with the easiest way of doing that, could be a huge differential in selecting a tool (set of tools).
Sr. Software Engineer at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Apr 10, 2016
1. Meet business needs
2.Total cost of ownership
3. Performance
4. Stability
5. Scalability
6. Easy to use/build reports/administration
7. Functionality/Visualization
8. Mobility
Along with
9. User friendly
10. Security
11. Method of implementation
MSBI Technical Lead at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
Top 20
Aug 11, 2015
1. First and foremost. Gather the detailed BI requirement from Organization needs. Answer the below questions,
a. How much GB (memory size) is required to hold / maintain organization data?
b. How much the data is going to increase by months and years?
c. How many BI users (Analyst) are going to use BI system?
d. How Critical would the BI system would be for End users?
e. What are the reporting requirements from End users? do they need simple report, visualized reports, Self service BI requirements
f. What is the Budget to build BI?
g. Is management ok to have Cloud BI?
........... like this much more information
Based on this above needs selection of BI would vary.
Typical BI tools features
1. Core BI features
DB Engine, Master Data Management, Data Quality Management, Scaleability, Performance, Hardware and Software Maintenance, Replication requirements
2. Additional features such as reporting, sharing, collaboration, visualization, etc
3. Ease of use (installation, operations, learning, etc)
4. User friendly design environment and run time environment
5. Customized Security features
6. Product Stability and Consistency
7. Good Product Support available
8. Ability to merge / mingle with Social Media.
9. Cost not significantly high/low with competitor products
10. High Productivity to develop and deploy
11. Forum / open support guidance availability
Data Group Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Jul 23, 2015
Security integration. My existing application already has a list of users and what products they have access to. Allow me to push this assignment to the BI tool or have the BI tool call out for access to a dimension. Don't make me duplicate permissions.
Ease of setting up the metadata layer (I would like to be able to manipulate it programmatically / via scripts)
Make it appear to be part of the existing application. No separate logon, run headless or allow significant LnF changes.
Licensing to match my usage not my hardware.
The success or failure of any BI project depends on collecting and prioritizing Business requirements and must include the following:
1. A targeted business process
2. How BI can improve the process
3. When BI will be used
4. What kind of BI is needed
5. Who will use it
6. How improvements will be measured
In most cases, BI investments need to address:
Better alignment of BI with business strategy
Improved data quality
Better integration of BI systems with other systems, such as CRM or ERP
Better understanding of user needs and requirements
Improved user training
Brainstorm ideas - on how BI can be used
Identifying business questions - gaining more detail on requirements and information needed
The most important criteria for me would be it's ease of use for non-technical users. If you have to use data analysts to develop all the reports then keep looking.
Successful BI implementation allows you to transform data at hand into actionable insights for both strategic and tactical business decisions.This guide: https://www.cleveroad.com/blog... will help organization owners find out all the details about how to implement business intelligence!
Founder at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
Sep 19, 2018
For us it normally comes down to a combination of the following:
1. Cost of implementation
2. Ease of use
3 Vendor lock in or does it use shared technology
Presales at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Apr 9, 2018
1. Cost of implementation & Licensing Price
2. Ease of use and drill down function
3. Ease to change the source of data, as data information is keep increasing
4. Can link to multiple datasource like mssql, MySQL, excel, csv.....
5. Speed of data present BI & Drill down
6. User access rights, since not all information should be publish to all level of people
Manager SAP at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 3, 2018
01> Fulfill the business requirements
02> Cost of the Implementation.
03> User friendly, ease to use
04> Real time Dashboard
05> Performance & Scalability
06> Troubleshooting and Support
Definitely, ease of use, the real-time dashboards, performance, and stability. The fact that a relative novice to Cognos is able to utilize the tool on day 1 is impactful.
dept manager at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Feb 15, 2017
1) Integration capabilities to make complex solution (to bi built in the core systems / co-exist with core system)
2) Ability to get data from RDBMSs (from core system) easily
When it comes to integration capabilities, which system-integrations are crucial to the solution performance, to the extent that users must be continuously informed/updated about their availability?
A package that can be used by Main Street. Too many of the BI Vendors only focus on enterprise. Organizations of all sizes have tons of data that important information can be gleaned from. Frankly, the smaller your organization, the more you need it because your risk threshold is lower.
SAS BI Consultant at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Jan 20, 2016
Data Analysis (Understanding of Data) after analysis you can discover pattern of data or you can extract fruitful data for the business process or business management automatically.
Information Technology Bureau Deputy Director at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Oct 16, 2015
BI tools are not easy to implement unless:
1. you have done a business need analysis.
2. you develop an strategy that provide continue support to the end users.
3. you got executive management approval.
4. you have a product maintenance plan that allows to continue to update the products.
5. you have a daily backup/restore strategy in place.
6. you have a technical team trained.
-Is BI Tool User Friendly for data modeling?
-Is Licensing Cost affordable?
-Is BI tool have ETL option?
-Is Web based?
-Can it produce charts on graphs? If yes then can we use it another application by just coping & pasting?
-Is it have auto ETL & auto report scheduling option?
-Is it have user management option?
-Is it have Export facility?
-Can we integrate different database in one table?
-can we connect flat files?
Operations Support Manager at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Oct 8, 2015
Implementation time/complexity
Ease of use (from implementation to user in a short amount of time)
Training and support availability
Shared knowledge boards (is there a community of users who share ideas and suggestions?)
Scalabilitly
Visualization tools - with ability to produce visually appealing, value added dashboards, charts, and standard reports
Can the tool produce interactive files (e.g. Xcelsius output) that are shared externally via .pdf, Excel, etc.?
Multiple file output options
Publication options
Cost
-How little training is required to get end users (Non-IT) going.
- Scalability
-Ability to access multiple types of data sources
- Ability to integrate with OLTP databases with minimal footprint. (Im assuming OLAP integration is defacto)
-Data blending capabilities.
Manager HRO Application Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Sep 18, 2015
- Ease of use for IT and non-IT end users
- OLAP functions
- Performance: Creation and consumption of In-memory MOLAP cubes
- Accepting integration with other OLAP engines thru MDX queries
- Easy mapping of Logical views from physical datawarehouse tables/views.
- Creation of Dynamic Dashboards and Transparent way to expose them to Mobile applications
- Scalable solutions.
- Authorization Model at very low granularity level (attribute data) to allow multi-tenant solutions.
- License model and cost
1. Licensing cost.
2. Infrastructure requirement.
3. Scalability.
4. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
5. Metadata support.
6. Mobility and Cloud based customizations.
7. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support
Principalmente: Integración, facilidad de uso, visualización de información en tiempo real y costos de licenciamiento. Entre otras con menos peso como soporte, movilidad, documentación, etc.
1) The most important is that the functionality meets the company requirements.
2) That the new functions required in the future can be easily implemented
3) Security
4) Stability
5) Performance
6) user - friendliness
7) TCO
Snr BI Developer / Team Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Top 20
Jul 2, 2015
Open API interface which allow you extend functionality not covered by default. If you take one of the TOP 10 BI tools every product has cons and pros. In my practice from many projects I haven't product which 100% satisfied customer requirements
Not in order of importance:
1. Licensing cost
2. Scalability
3. User friendly (I mean also for non technical user)
4. Good support (remote and on site)
5. Use of well known components (DB, OS, etc.)
- Turnaround time, the ability to meet the shrinking decision window
- Vizual / interactive BI structure, strong data vizualization with analitic dashboards
- Ease of use
- Cost of licensing and ownership
With respect to these criterias I prefer E-Kalite Software
Datawarehouse Consultant - Freelance at a comms service provider
Vendor
Jun 26, 2015
@ChaelChristopher i think still it means the singular. If he wanted to mean plural, the question would be "what are your most important criteria.. ".
Off course there are a lot of criteria to when you are researhing a BI tool. But every role can have different priorities. Power users or developers may want it to be easy to use, sponsor may want it not to cost too much.
Senior Principal at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Jun 26, 2015
@Mehmet Üskes -- Criteria is a plural concept, criterion is singular. I think the bulk of these answers are adequate...the reality being that no one selects a BI tool for just ONE reason. There are always strengths and weaknesses in a class of BI tools but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Selection should be based on the basic needs of a project or an organization, and the needs of a single business user will be different than the needs of an organization that needs to OEM a vendor's solution into their own offering.
Datawarehouse Consultant - Freelance at a comms service provider
Vendor
Jun 26, 2015
I wonder why most of people answered with writing more than one criteria and some of them have shared long lists. Is not it clear : "What is your most important criteria" ? It means you should say your MOST important criteria which has to be only one, Otherwise the question would be like "What are your important criterias.. " :)
Assistant Vice President at a tech services company
Consultant
Top 20
Jun 26, 2015
Ease of use (UI/UX implementation & learning curve)
Ease of implementation
Stability
Performance & Scalibility
TCO
Other tools included in the package (reporting, ETL, analytics, db etc.)
Interoperability with other tools
A lot depends on context but important factors I've seen influence people are:
- End-user ease of use (meaning self-service and integration into the desktop today)
- Enterprise features such as integration into enterprise security
- Ease of data acquisition and ingress into the platform
- Cost
- Existing vendor relationships
- Long term support costs (when people think of it ...)
The cost is important but having a tool that is simple enough for user to use and build on but also strong enough to support complex processing and provide strong performance is equally important.
Connectors are very important, being able to use various data sources.
Senior Principal at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Consultant
May 5, 2015
Integration - applicable on many fronts...
Is the platform integrated as a whole (i.e., a report created for web renders correctly on a mobile device)
Does the tool integrate with many data sources, including RDBMSs, cubes, spreadsheets, APIs...
Importing SAS, R, or PMML packages?
Integration with Office?
Does the BI vendor provide well-documented and flexible APIs?
Can the the platform be integrated with SSO and portals?
Data Management Expert at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Apr 30, 2015
And, in order:
1. Easy for non-technical users & UI
1. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support, and Security.
1. Reporting / Visualization - dashboard, cubes
4. Licensing cost / Infrastructure requirement /Scalability.
5. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
6. Metadata support.
7. Mobility and Cloud based accessibility.
The top three are '1' as the order would change depending on the budget and size of the organization.
I am a user, but I compare Bi tools. In my understanding,
1. Cost
2. Complexity and time in installation
3. Security
4. Compatibility
5. ETL - Issues around it
6. Support
7. Responsiveness (Device compatibility for end users)
I guess, there will be more, but these are on top of my mind.
1. Total Cost of ownership.
2. Infrastructure requirement.
3. Scalability.
4. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
5. Mobility and Cloud based customizations.
6. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support.
7. Resource (employee/contractor) availability to execute and maintain
MicroStrategy Expert with 15 years exp. at Strategy BI Consulting
Vendor
Mar 2, 2015
After more then 15 years experience in BI Consulting,
I see as most important is:
1. Completeness of the solution (is it possible to cover all business requirements with a single BI platform )
2. Centralized administration and unified semantic layer
3. Ability to integrate with a variety of data sources
4. Scalability
5. Support and maintainable upgrades
License model fitting our startup requirements; dashboarding incl collaboration functionality; cloud based, sass capability and multi tenant; integrated lite dwh plus mdm functionality
The answers already provided cover much of what I would recommend, so let me add a few items that are not mentioned:
1) Company track record. Have they delivered in the past on new features and new functions?
2) Is there a product roadmap for future development?
3) Is there native driver support for your data source(s)? Relying on ODBC for your BI tools is going to guarantee slow performance.
4) Are the major modules/functions web-based or PC-based? If you have to install software on every PC it will cost more to maintain and be more difficult to upgrade.
I am a news writer at TechTarget.com and am interested in interviewing users of BI solutions. If you are willing to be interviewed, I can assure you that I will fact check before publishing. If you found BI software that performs well or not so well, and your company will allow an on-the-record interview for a story, or if you know someone I can contact at your company for a story, I would be pleased to speak with you. Please email at dring@techtarget.com
1 - Self-Service : Empower everyone with reports that are easy to build and share customize reports
2 - Unify disparate data sources : use data from multiple sources in a single report, (Excel, text/CSV files, any database, Web, etc.)
3 - Real-time business intelligence : makes data available on demand rather than on regularly scheduled annual, quarterly or monthly
4 - Maintenance issues and easy to implement. : centralized data management and implementing a generic solution to meet specific challenges often becomes difficult and costly
4 - TCO : have the lowest ownership costs (pricing Licensing + installation & maintenance costs + Infrastructure requirement)
Information Management Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Nov 28, 2014
for BI platforms;
1. ease of use from end user point of view, and ability to manage flexibility for different user groups
2. ease of maintenance
3. visual capabilities
4. performance
I think the most Important criteria Is not specific feature, it's actually the matching between the customer's needs and the features of the tool. So you can write ease of use for example but if the solution is a dashboard that hangs in the CEO / CTO / CFO office then it's not relevant.
If the need is to analyze the data by only the economic department then you need a tool that is great at analyzing like Sisense or Tableau.
On the other hand if the requirements is a full-scale large-company business intelligence solution for thousands of users that maybe you Can go with more general solutions like Yellowfin.
The requirement could be embedded business intelligence then you can consider tools that made for that (yellowfin / pentaho) and don't forget Big-data That can change the picture altogether.
So, in other words, first know what your customers need then you can pick the right set of tools:
data integration, data warehouse, business intelligence GUI tool.
And you also can combine several of them for example:
1. Pentaho data integration, exasol , yellowfin
2. MySQL and Sisense (that has an internal in memory database)
Director of Engineering with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Nov 5, 2014
#1 - Ease of use without the need to know how to code as a business user. Should simply be able to search for answers or drag and drop fields to get insights.
BI Tools are essential for transforming raw data into insightful business intelligence to drive growth and efficiency. They offer capabilities such as data visualization and analysis, catering to the strategic needs of businesses. These tools are integral for informed decision-making processes.BI Tools provide companies with the ability to aggregate, analyze, and visualize data, enabling them to make data-driven decisions. These tools help identify trends, spot inefficiencies, and capitalize...
When evaluating Business Intelligence (BI) tools, one of the key considerations is an intuitive interface that enables both technical and non-technical users to easily build reports. A good BI tool should connect seamlessly to a wide range of data sources, including databases, cloud applications, and spreadsheets. It should also offer a flexible variety of charts and graphs to suit different business needs. Additionally, BI tools must be capable of handling large datasets and scaling with the organization’s growth.
Key features in BI Tools include:
When selecting BI Tools, seamless data integration capabilities are crucial since they enable you to combine data from various sources efficiently. User-friendly dashboards facilitate easy navigation and interpretation of data, empowering users to make data-driven decisions quickly. Real-time analytics provide immediate insights into changing data trends, ensuring timely adjustments to strategies.
Advanced reporting allows businesses to generate comprehensive and customizable reports that meet specific analytical needs. Scalability is vital, enabling the system to grow alongside the business without loss of performance. Security features are essential to protect sensitive information and ensure compliance with standards such as GDPR and HIPAA. These tools should facilitate efficient decision-making and improve tactical and strategic initiatives.
The tool should have an intuitive interface and easy to use tool. It should seamlessly integrate with multiple data sources like database/clouds/API's etc.It also should have advanced visualization capabilities, customizable dashboards, and user-friendly reporting features.
Thank you! There are many good ideas.
It is really difficult to choose the right one, in my experience, the most important thing is not the tool that we choose. The most important thing is to design the correct scope, what we need to give us the tool based on two factors, the data we want to obtain and for whom that data will be. If a good approach is made, the chosen one will be the correct one.
Total cost of ownership is often overlooked during BI product selection. Cheap products do not equal cheap ownership experiences, whether it is missing functionality which must be provided by additional products, poor integration of modules which causes duplication of effort, weak support from the vendor, high cost of maintenance or constant changes to the product portfolio.
The key factors to consider are:
Is this product right for the intended user-base? It should not be necessary to purchase one product for IT, one for business analysts and one for 'end-users'. There are considerable cost savings associated with using a single platform (not a single vendor with many products they have built or bought).
Does the product have the depth of functionality needed, and foreseeably anticipated?
Is that functionality accessible? Can an expert easily access complex, deep functionality, without the occasional or new user being overwhelmed by the interface?
Can it reach all the necessary data sources? Both inside and outside the corporation.
How fast is the user experience, both in developing reports and dashboards and in retrieving the data? Speed of both allows iterative learning and development by new and occasional users, while ensuring high productivity for expert users.
Does it work with our real world data? Too often evaluation of products still relies on superficial test on restricted volumes of data, or the lower complexity data as "it would take too long to build a fully representative testing environment" - big mistake. Identify the product(s) you believe are suitable and then bear the cost of proving they can deliver in your own use case. Too often a poor acquisition is followed by increasing spend to "make it work", when money spent earlier on selecting and proving the right tool would lead to much lower overall cost of ownership and more importantly early success and hence ROI.
Does the company have a history of good backward compatibility? You will build a vast amount of intellectual property with a BI tool. You will become dependent on the insight it provides your organization. So investigate how well you chosen product has allowed users to migrate that IP forward through new revisions of their products. Rewriting IP is a good opportunity to clean it up and start over, but it's a massive unnecessary expense if you have built what you need and it is the vendor forcing you to rewrite your work.
Use case! What and or for whom are you trying to provide reporting capabilities to and from what applications and data sources. What are the skill levels of these users - basic business users or analysts. Ease of use should be top of the list as well as a quality customer support experience.
There are many choices today around BI solutions (embedded, self-service, etc.) and finding the right one depends upon answering these questions.
Easy to use, performs well, cost, and not going to send me insane integrating it with other systems. Everything else is gravy.
Key Evaluation Points for BI Tools:
1) Ease of use – Self-service analytics and data exploration, End-user report consumption and Time to develop new reports
2) User Interface and Visualization effectiveness – If it does not look good business will not use it
3) Styles of BI Supported – Scorecards Dashboards, Operational Reports, OLAP Reporting, Predictive Analysis, Notification and Alerting
4) License/TCO – Open Source vs Enterprise Software – support and maintenance structure – development and administration costs, environment deployment constraints, admin tools
5) Performance and data scalability – Depends on the business requirements and data volume
6) Data source connectivity – Depends on the source systems that need to be integrated and backend data integration
7) Security – Authentication, Authorization, Application, Object and Data level security
8) Extensibility and API/SDK – If integration with external applications is required
9) Feature Set/Product Roadmap – scope of product features, speed of platform innovation
Most folks tend to think of UI and the flashy, sexy stuff. However, experience has proven that adopting a platform approach is key to success - a Platform that can access any data source and provide capabilities for internal and external users from the same platform, and not merely serve as a data visualization tool. The ability to do disconnected analytics cannot be discounted; Further having a platform that does NOT mandate creating a data warehouse as a prerequisite; i.e. It shoild have the ability to access operational data sources with minimal impact to the back-end systems.
I believe you have to match product capabilities to company BI strategy first and then consider infrastructure standards and internal competencies. if you do these things you should get value. The type of BI solution is important but don't be fooled by the "it's all about data visualization or big data". it is not in most organizations...
"Time to insight" is very important for me. Since the business questions arise non stop and need fast responses, going from raw data to answer a business question in the lesser time possible, with the easiest way of doing that, could be a huge differential in selecting a tool (set of tools).
User Friendly, Customization, Pricing
1. Meet business needs
2.Total cost of ownership
3. Performance
4. Stability
5. Scalability
6. Easy to use/build reports/administration
7. Functionality/Visualization
8. Mobility
Along with
9. User friendly
10. Security
11. Method of implementation
1) Organic Adoption
2) IT involvement in only data prep/mgt. not having to build anything
3) true Self Reliance not endless self service report runs
In the following order :
Licensing Cost
Ease of Use for End User
Functional Capabilities
Performance
1. First and foremost. Gather the detailed BI requirement from Organization needs. Answer the below questions,
a. How much GB (memory size) is required to hold / maintain organization data?
b. How much the data is going to increase by months and years?
c. How many BI users (Analyst) are going to use BI system?
d. How Critical would the BI system would be for End users?
e. What are the reporting requirements from End users? do they need simple report, visualized reports, Self service BI requirements
f. What is the Budget to build BI?
g. Is management ok to have Cloud BI?
........... like this much more information
Based on this above needs selection of BI would vary.
Typical BI tools features
1. Core BI features
DB Engine, Master Data Management, Data Quality Management, Scaleability, Performance, Hardware and Software Maintenance, Replication requirements
2. Additional features such as reporting, sharing, collaboration, visualization, etc
3. Ease of use (installation, operations, learning, etc)
4. User friendly design environment and run time environment
5. Customized Security features
6. Product Stability and Consistency
7. Good Product Support available
8. Ability to merge / mingle with Social Media.
9. Cost not significantly high/low with competitor products
10. High Productivity to develop and deploy
11. Forum / open support guidance availability
I see these are the basic BI selection criteria.
Security integration. My existing application already has a list of users and what products they have access to. Allow me to push this assignment to the BI tool or have the BI tool call out for access to a dimension. Don't make me duplicate permissions.
Ease of setting up the metadata layer (I would like to be able to manipulate it programmatically / via scripts)
Make it appear to be part of the existing application. No separate logon, run headless or allow significant LnF changes.
Licensing to match my usage not my hardware.
Most important it is to support all End-User needs; Analyst, Management, Operational
The success or failure of any BI project depends on collecting and prioritizing Business requirements and must include the following:
1. A targeted business process
2. How BI can improve the process
3. When BI will be used
4. What kind of BI is needed
5. Who will use it
6. How improvements will be measured
In most cases, BI investments need to address:
Better alignment of BI with business strategy
Improved data quality
Better integration of BI systems with other systems, such as CRM or ERP
Better understanding of user needs and requirements
Improved user training
Brainstorm ideas - on how BI can be used
Identifying business questions - gaining more detail on requirements and information needed
The most important criteria for me would be it's ease of use for non-technical users. If you have to use data analysts to develop all the reports then keep looking.
Performance and Scalability. Ease of use goes without saying.
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Afordable for the company. Capacity of training. Solutions for needs
For us it normally comes down to a combination of the following:
1. Cost of implementation
2. Ease of use
3 Vendor lock in or does it use shared technology
1. Cost of implementation & Licensing Price
2. Ease of use and drill down function
3. Ease to change the source of data, as data information is keep increasing
4. Can link to multiple datasource like mssql, MySQL, excel, csv.....
5. Speed of data present BI & Drill down
6. User access rights, since not all information should be publish to all level of people
will the solution solve my present,past,and future problem. how about support should incase of downtime. performance and scalability
01> Fulfill the business requirements
02> Cost of the Implementation.
03> User friendly, ease to use
04> Real time Dashboard
05> Performance & Scalability
06> Troubleshooting and Support
“It’s better to have fewer things you trust than have a whole lot of things that are suspect,”
Support is the number one thing you think of before any other thing
Customization, Scalability, OnPrem or Cloud, Licence price v Functions you get and the resources the BI system demand in staffing.
Scalability, Performance, Security
User experience, metadata support, Performance
Speed to market, User interface, scalability, performance, and many other depending on how bad your current BI situation actually is.
Definitely, ease of use, the real-time dashboards, performance, and stability. The fact that a relative novice to Cognos is able to utilize the tool on day 1 is impactful.
Connectivity
ETL
Visualization
Easy-to-build
Easy to use/build reports/administration
1) Integration capabilities to make complex solution (to bi built in the core systems / co-exist with core system)
2) Ability to get data from RDBMSs (from core system) easily
1. Scalability
2. Self Service
3. Visualization
4. Mobility
5. Performance
1:Functionality/Visualization
2: Mobility Along with User friendly
3:. Security
When it comes to integration capabilities, which system-integrations are crucial to the solution performance, to the extent that users must be continuously informed/updated about their availability?
A package that can be used by Main Street. Too many of the BI Vendors only focus on enterprise. Organizations of all sizes have tons of data that important information can be gleaned from. Frankly, the smaller your organization, the more you need it because your risk threshold is lower.
1) Functional capabilities
2) Scalability
3) Licensing /TOC
Adaptability of the tool
Constant Development & investment
Ease of use for end consumers
Data Analysis (Understanding of Data) after analysis you can discover pattern of data or you can extract fruitful data for the business process or business management automatically.
Clear experience for end users and have efficient integration wiht other systems and technologies
TCO and a set of features that you need for your work.
Ease of use
TCO
Ease of Use
Easy integration capabilities
Security
Scalability from dept level to corporate wide.
1. Meet business needs
2.Total cost of ownership
3. Performance
4. Stability
5. Scalability
6. Easy to use/build reports/administration
7. Functionality/Visualisation
8. Mobility
1. Unified Access & Connectivity
2. Discover & Explore
3. Collaborate
4. Administration
BI tools are not easy to implement unless:
1. you have done a business need analysis.
2. you develop an strategy that provide continue support to the end users.
3. you got executive management approval.
4. you have a product maintenance plan that allows to continue to update the products.
5. you have a daily backup/restore strategy in place.
6. you have a technical team trained.
-Is BI Tool User Friendly for data modeling?
-Is Licensing Cost affordable?
-Is BI tool have ETL option?
-Is Web based?
-Can it produce charts on graphs? If yes then can we use it another application by just coping & pasting?
-Is it have auto ETL & auto report scheduling option?
-Is it have user management option?
-Is it have Export facility?
-Can we integrate different database in one table?
-can we connect flat files?
Implementation time/complexity
Ease of use (from implementation to user in a short amount of time)
Training and support availability
Shared knowledge boards (is there a community of users who share ideas and suggestions?)
Scalabilitly
Visualization tools - with ability to produce visually appealing, value added dashboards, charts, and standard reports
Can the tool produce interactive files (e.g. Xcelsius output) that are shared externally via .pdf, Excel, etc.?
Multiple file output options
Publication options
Cost
I think the most important criteria would consist the ease of use (user friendly), implementation and licensing.
- Architecture / Infrastructure
- Compatibility across platforms and devices
- Predictive Capability
- Data Mining - breadth / depth / reach
- Security Considerations
- Customization - Search
- Customization - Visualization
- Automated Updates to Information
-How little training is required to get end users (Non-IT) going.
- Scalability
-Ability to access multiple types of data sources
- Ability to integrate with OLTP databases with minimal footprint. (Im assuming OLAP integration is defacto)
-Data blending capabilities.
- Ease of use for IT and non-IT end users
- OLAP functions
- Performance: Creation and consumption of In-memory MOLAP cubes
- Accepting integration with other OLAP engines thru MDX queries
- Easy mapping of Logical views from physical datawarehouse tables/views.
- Creation of Dynamic Dashboards and Transparent way to expose them to Mobile applications
- Scalable solutions.
- Authorization Model at very low granularity level (attribute data) to allow multi-tenant solutions.
- License model and cost
User Friendly, Feature richness, Scalability, Infrastructure requirement, Ease of Troubleshooting and Support.
User Friendly, Feature richness, Scalability, Infrastructure requirement, Ease of Troubleshooting and Support
1. Licensing cost.
2. Infrastructure requirement.
3. Scalability.
4. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
5. Metadata support.
6. Mobility and Cloud based customizations.
7. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support
Integration Capabilities and User friendly
Licensing Cost
User Friendly
Low Maintenance Cost
Integration Capabilites
Product roadmap, ease of use, performance and cost.
Usability, Speed to market, Manageability and scalability
Mainly Reports are Integrate with Web UI applications
Easy to use and build the reports, scalability
Feature richness, Flexibility and Cost ( License and Support)
Performance
Time to market, agility
Ease of user (end users), user empowerment
Scalabilty
Hierarchies easy to build, maintain and navigate
Principalmente: Integración, facilidad de uso, visualización de información en tiempo real y costos de licenciamiento. Entre otras con menos peso como soporte, movilidad, documentación, etc.
Ease of use,
Integration with current analytics tool I am using: google analytics,
Cost
Integration, Licensing
Functional Capabilities
1) The most important is that the functionality meets the company requirements.
2) That the new functions required in the future can be easily implemented
3) Security
4) Stability
5) Performance
6) user - friendliness
7) TCO
Self Service capabilities; ease of use; documentation and developer community
Open API interface which allow you extend functionality not covered by default. If you take one of the TOP 10 BI tools every product has cons and pros. In my practice from many projects I haven't product which 100% satisfied customer requirements
Not in order of importance:
1. Licensing cost
2. Scalability
3. User friendly (I mean also for non technical user)
4. Good support (remote and on site)
5. Use of well known components (DB, OS, etc.)
1. Data Handling
2. Ease of use/implementation
3. License Cost
4. Latest technique & innovations
5. Connector - Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics
- Turnaround time, the ability to meet the shrinking decision window
- Vizual / interactive BI structure, strong data vizualization with analitic dashboards
- Ease of use
- Cost of licensing and ownership
With respect to these criterias I prefer E-Kalite Software
@ChaelChristopher i think still it means the singular. If he wanted to mean plural, the question would be "what are your most important criteria.. ".
Off course there are a lot of criteria to when you are researhing a BI tool. But every role can have different priorities. Power users or developers may want it to be easy to use, sponsor may want it not to cost too much.
@Mehmet Üskes -- Criteria is a plural concept, criterion is singular. I think the bulk of these answers are adequate...the reality being that no one selects a BI tool for just ONE reason. There are always strengths and weaknesses in a class of BI tools but if all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Selection should be based on the basic needs of a project or an organization, and the needs of a single business user will be different than the needs of an organization that needs to OEM a vendor's solution into their own offering.
I wonder why most of people answered with writing more than one criteria and some of them have shared long lists. Is not it clear : "What is your most important criteria" ? It means you should say your MOST important criteria which has to be only one, Otherwise the question would be like "What are your important criterias.. " :)
Ease of use (UI/UX implementation & learning curve)
Ease of implementation
Stability
Performance & Scalibility
TCO
Other tools included in the package (reporting, ETL, analytics, db etc.)
Interoperability with other tools
1. Performance
2. Usability & UI
3. Maintenance and code
4.Reliability
5. Connectivity to Databases
Cost
At présent time INTEROPERABILITY ....
Simplicity then scalability. Everything else is negotiable in BI
0.Security
1.Compatibility
2.Limitations
3.Ease of access
4.Visually Friendly
5.Simplicity
Ease of use (Time from data to Insight) and the enterprise capabilities (single version of the truth within the company)
Ease of use, speed of implementation, ad hoc capabilities.
1) Cloud strategy of the product.
2) Ease of use when cloud based.
(1) Visualization capabilities
Easy use, fast implementation and search performance
Ease of user and data connectivity
1. Scalability 2. Simplicity and the power to end-users to analyse data 3. TCO
versatility
capacity to develop
user friendly
Does the tool integrate with many data sources
A lot depends on context but important factors I've seen influence people are:
- End-user ease of use (meaning self-service and integration into the desktop today)
- Enterprise features such as integration into enterprise security
- Ease of data acquisition and ingress into the platform
- Cost
- Existing vendor relationships
- Long term support costs (when people think of it ...)
The cost is important but having a tool that is simple enough for user to use and build on but also strong enough to support complex processing and provide strong performance is equally important.
Connectors are very important, being able to use various data sources.
Integration - applicable on many fronts...
Is the platform integrated as a whole (i.e., a report created for web renders correctly on a mobile device)
Does the tool integrate with many data sources, including RDBMSs, cubes, spreadsheets, APIs...
Importing SAS, R, or PMML packages?
Integration with Office?
Does the BI vendor provide well-documented and flexible APIs?
Can the the platform be integrated with SSO and portals?
And, in order:
1. Easy for non-technical users & UI
1. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support, and Security.
1. Reporting / Visualization - dashboard, cubes
4. Licensing cost / Infrastructure requirement /Scalability.
5. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
6. Metadata support.
7. Mobility and Cloud based accessibility.
The top three are '1' as the order would change depending on the budget and size of the organization.
Ease of tapping into DB, ease of use, and available industry benchmark.
I am a user, but I compare Bi tools. In my understanding,
1. Cost
2. Complexity and time in installation
3. Security
4. Compatibility
5. ETL - Issues around it
6. Support
7. Responsiveness (Device compatibility for end users)
I guess, there will be more, but these are on top of my mind.
Easy for Development
Provide all Information to all levels of management.
Easy for publishing
Security
- User Friendly
- Ease of adaptation
- Security
- Cost
1. Interoperability
2. Ease of Use
3. Security
4. Cost
1 - user friendly & high performance
2- cost
3-perfect database to access Tables
4 - ((((( TRUST )))))
1. Total Cost of ownership.
2. Infrastructure requirement.
3. Scalability.
4. Complexity/ Ease of Development effort as well as Customization.
5. Mobility and Cloud based customizations.
6. Ease of Troubleshooting and Support.
7. Resource (employee/contractor) availability to execute and maintain
Ease of implementing and user friendly visuals.
Ease of use, scalable
Flexibilty and suitability to requirements
After more then 15 years experience in BI Consulting,
I see as most important is:
1. Completeness of the solution (is it possible to cover all business requirements with a single BI platform )
2. Centralized administration and unified semantic layer
3. Ability to integrate with a variety of data sources
4. Scalability
5. Support and maintainable upgrades
License model fitting our startup requirements; dashboarding incl collaboration functionality; cloud based, sass capability and multi tenant; integrated lite dwh plus mdm functionality
Flexibility it gives to the end user to discover and explore without being constrained by (by IT) pre-defined 'search trajectories' / access paths
Licensing cost
User Interface
Scalability
Flexibility
Performance
User experience
Customization
Support
Mobility
competitive differentiators
Integration with current systems
Visualisations of data to make sense of them
(1) Ease of use
(2) Ability to integrate with a variety of data sources
(3) Company reputation
The answers already provided cover much of what I would recommend, so let me add a few items that are not mentioned:
1) Company track record. Have they delivered in the past on new features and new functions?
2) Is there a product roadmap for future development?
3) Is there native driver support for your data source(s)? Relying on ODBC for your BI tools is going to guarantee slow performance.
4) Are the major modules/functions web-based or PC-based? If you have to install software on every PC it will cost more to maintain and be more difficult to upgrade.
I hope those are helpful.
How quickly it can crunch millions of records.
Cost Effective
1. Data visualizing capability
2. Tools for ETL and Reporting
3. Ease of use
4. Implementation cost
5. Development cost
Functionality and cost. Cost to include license, infrastructure, training and ongoing support.
Ease of use, Visualization options, Interactive, accuracy when combining data from multiple data sources, alerts
You need:
type of storage: MOLAP; ROLAP HOLAP
Architecture: Stage, Landing, Reports
Integration, Analysis and Reports Tools
TCO / Functionality trade offs for the current environment with an eye on the longer term.
I am a news writer at TechTarget.com and am interested in interviewing users of BI solutions. If you are willing to be interviewed, I can assure you that I will fact check before publishing. If you found BI software that performs well or not so well, and your company will allow an on-the-record interview for a story, or if you know someone I can contact at your company for a story, I would be pleased to speak with you. Please email at dring@techtarget.com
Apart from sufficient functionality: readiness and ease to deploy and upgrade.
Whether the adequately meet the needs of the business.
1. Find good use cases
2. Ease of integration
3. Have mobile versions
4. Security aspect when used with mobile devices.
1. Easy to Use
2. Scalable
3. Free Support
4. cost effective
5. Business Requirement
Flexible intergrating with existing systems, ease of use, maintenance and good technical support
1-Business ( Answer from the Business Users)
2-Development Effort.
3-Cost of the product
4-Maintenance.
5-Technical Support.
1 - Self-Service : Empower everyone with reports that are easy to build and share customize reports
2 - Unify disparate data sources : use data from multiple sources in a single report, (Excel, text/CSV files, any database, Web, etc.)
3 - Real-time business intelligence : makes data available on demand rather than on regularly scheduled annual, quarterly or monthly
4 - Maintenance issues and easy to implement. : centralized data management and implementing a generic solution to meet specific challenges often becomes difficult and costly
4 - TCO : have the lowest ownership costs (pricing Licensing + installation & maintenance costs + Infrastructure requirement)
1. Self Service / Ease of Use
2. Performance and Scalability to handle Big Data
3. Database agnostic
4. Good Product support and TCO
Knowing what you want to achieve with that tool
for BI platforms;
1. ease of use from end user point of view, and ability to manage flexibility for different user groups
2. ease of maintenance
3. visual capabilities
4. performance
I think the most Important criteria Is not specific feature, it's actually the matching between the customer's needs and the features of the tool. So you can write ease of use for example but if the solution is a dashboard that hangs in the CEO / CTO / CFO office then it's not relevant.
If the need is to analyze the data by only the economic department then you need a tool that is great at analyzing like Sisense or Tableau.
On the other hand if the requirements is a full-scale large-company business intelligence solution for thousands of users that maybe you Can go with more general solutions like Yellowfin.
The requirement could be embedded business intelligence then you can consider tools that made for that (yellowfin / pentaho) and don't forget Big-data That can change the picture altogether.
So, in other words, first know what your customers need then you can pick the right set of tools:
data integration, data warehouse, business intelligence GUI tool.
And you also can combine several of them for example:
1. Pentaho data integration, exasol , yellowfin
2. MySQL and Sisense (that has an internal in memory database)
Our website: www.inflow-systems.com/
Also I am the author of the course: Pentaho kettle tutorial at pentahokettletutorial.com/
Ease of Use - ability to train a 'power' user. Flexible and performance options.
#1 - Ease of use without the need to know how to code as a business user. Should simply be able to search for answers or drag and drop fields to get insights.
Following this order:
1. Comprehensive, Easy & Intuitive User Interface (Scorecards Dashboards, Reports, OLAP, ...)
2. Licencing->Installation->Maintenance Costs + Infrastructure requirement (TCO)
3. Performance, scalability & Connectivity (data sources)
Business user friendly
1. Flexibility
2. Cost
3. Ease of Use
4. Mobile
Ease of use is key.
Usability, Integration, Performance & Scalability
1. Ease of use
2. Help/Support
1) Simplicity / Ease Of Use
2) Integration / Ease Of Integrating
3) Supportability / Maintainability Over Time
4) Performance & Scalability
All above and flexibility of integration with existing corporate systems
Cost, Performance, Ease of Use, Visualizations
Performance, Licensing Cost and User Friendly