

Also look for a vendor that supports generic connectors and has flexibility through APIs or plug-ins. Data sources: Make sure your primary data source is supported by your BI solution.These are the diverse data requirements commonly evaluated by application providers: The BI solutions you evaluate should be compatible with your current data environment, while at the same time have enough flexibility to meet future demands as your data architecture evolves. Analysis and authoring: Empowering your users to query their own data, create visualizations and reports, and share their findings with colleagues can add value to your analytics application.Interactivity and automation: Do users need to be able to interact with your dashboards? Consider whether you need to personalize visualizations, let users kick off workflows, or drill down into information.Presentation and information delivery: These requirements affect you present data in visualizations, dashboards, and reports, as well as the compatibility of your BI solution across different devices and formats.User personas: Increase the adoption of analytics by providing a broad range of users with a tailored experience that matches their needs and skills.These common self-service capabilities may affect your business intelligence requirements: “The more they can get their hands dirty and really dig deep, they love it.”ĭuring your evaluation, make sure the capabilities important to your project are demonstrated and understand how you will deliver and iterate upon these capabilities inside your application. “People want access to information and they want it easily,” says Trent McGrath a product leader at Citycounty Insurance Services. It also empowers users to be more self-sufficient. That frees up IT to work on more strategic projects rather than answering ad hoc requests. Ideally, such self-service capabilities let users answer their own questions without having to involve IT. Business intelligence requirements in this category may include dashboards and reports as well as the interactive and analytical functions users can perform. These are the core capabilities for all the end users of your application. > Get a Buyer’s Guide for Your Business Intelligence Project << It also means keeping your customers top of mind as you determine requirements. These five BI requirements (both technical and non-technical) are critical to any analytics implementation and common to most evaluations. Choosing the right BI solution involves thoroughly evaluating the technology, understanding the expertise offered by the vendor, and implementing a process to ensure success.
