posted on August 25, 2011 12:19
This is the first of 5 blog posts intended to help companies figure out which business intelligence (BI) solution to buy.
#1 Ease of Use
Ease of use is one of the most important considerations in your purchase decision. Your enterprise BI solution will never be as easy as Excel, but it can’t be so complex that people won’t use it. When in doubt, keep it simple. Every BI user should know which benchmarks are most important to the company as a whole, and have smaller key performance indicators that measure how their department, division or position contributes to the overarching company goals. Advanced users may need flexibility to slice-and-dice the data.
Is your business too complex to keep BI simple? Offering training is essential to make a complex system seem easier, so if you do decide to purchase a “high-end” BI solution, be sure to also budget for training. Don’t settle for training on dummy data. It’s not the same thing – at all. Your business has its own nuances, so use your own data for training and testing. You may also want to roll out pre-built individual dashboards to get your team started in the right direction. Change is challenging, so do what it takes to set your team up for success!