An abundance of choices and information available for every personal and professional aspect is making us falsely believe that the stakes are higher than they really are regarding the outcome of our decision. Coming to our topic, i.e., while selecting Business Intelligence Tools to go with, our goal remains to make a “flawless” choice. When we make decisions about going with a particular tool, we’re motivated not only by the opportunity for gain but also by the fear of loss. This decision can impact your business to a good extent.
There are so many companies around the world who are experts in offering Business intelligence Services or those who have their own BI tools. Some of the most popular tools include Qlikview, Pentaho, Microsoft Business Intelligence, Tableau, Yellowfin BI, IBM Cognos etc. Making a decision about selecting one of them for your company is not a one-day game. Following things might help you in bifurcating them and coming to a conclusion:
Resources availability: Selecting a BI tool highly depends on the availability of the developers working on that tool. The more complicated tool you select, the lesser number of resources you will find in the market to work on your project. On the contrary, developers working on easy-to-deploy tools can be found in abundance. Even if you select a specific tool and unable to find any resource, that selection would be of no use.
The depth of analysis: Business Intelligence is all about extracting a data from various vague formats to a standard one for analysing and decision making. The analysis is the most useful part of any BI tool. So you should know what level of analysis you require for perfect decision-making. Some tools like Tableau, Microsoft BI, and IBM Cognos etc. provides a deeper level of analysis as compared to the tools like Qlikview, Pentaho etc.
Your budget: Budget is the primary aspect considered while making any decision. While selecting the Business Intelligence Tools, you should also decide on a specific budget to deploy the tool and the overall process. It’s not a one-time investment, it needs a consistent outlay based on the size of the project and the timeframe. If you need a deeper level of reporting and analysis, be prepared to spend few extra grand or more as you will require the similar level of a tool which is usually expensive.
The ability of efficiently using the tool: There are a number of times when we get the most expensive and highly standard tool in the world, but don’t know how to use that. Similarly, make sure that the decision makers are well-versed with the tool and are in the position to make the most efficient use of those BI Tools to make the most important decisions for the business. Your investment would be worthless if you don’t have people who can resourcefully make a use of the stats and reports generated through the tool.
User-friendliness: This is another factor which plays an important role in the selection process. Usually, Business Intelligence services are useful for large organizations having offices and manufacturing units in multiple locations, for e.g., Oil and Gas industry, Retail, Manufacturing, Logistics etc. The decision-makers in such industries are indeed connected to the latest technology, but as their primary business domain is not Technology, they might find it difficult to use these tools. If the tool is user-friendly, only then the decision-makers can make an optimum use of the BI tool.
If you are in need of an end-to-end consulting about selecting the right Business Intelligence tool for you, get in touch with eLuminous Technologies who will help your business to convert the business insights and ideas into actionable results.
