What makes a good Business Intelligence and Analytics Tool?

A whole lot of data is available. We have means to collect and store data from every possible device in every possible format. But the data as such is of no use.  The readability of the data is very important and the information extraction from the data is where the money is.

Today, business analysts do not have to painstakingly write long codes to filter the information from the huge data sets. There are tools available to do that now. The data analyst have to ask the right questions and know how to operate the tool to get the necessary analysis done.

A business Intelligence and Analytic tool needs to have certain characteristics for it to be useful to the developers. The following are some of the characteristics that is necessary for a good BI tool:

Security:                                        

Since data analysts deal with secure data in the real world environment, the tool should provide security for the data. The tool should provide a secure connection with the data. The reports that are generated should also be stored in a secure file location. Also who can see what data has to be determined. This authentication is done at the database level, but sometimes, the users might want this authentication to be done using the tool. Thus, the tool should be able to handle some authentication mechanisms and provide privileges to the users.

Reporting Format: 

A major need for the business analytic tool is the visualization of the data. For example, the tool should enable a map view of a data-set that represents the geographic distribution of data. Also the user should be able to export the data into various reporting formats according to their needs. The tool should also support various forms of graphs and charts to represent the data according to the user query.

Scalability/Flexibility:

The business world is ever changing. The needs of the business world is also changing. What is essential today may not be essential tomorrow and new requirements may come in the future. The new requirements for a business analysts need not be just a change in the querying requirements but also may be an additional data-set integration or the migration of the database to an entirely new platform. Hence the BI tool should be able to handle these changes efficiently. The tool should be operational irrespective of the database and the size of the data-set. The analysts should not be forced to devote a long hours just because the database was migrated from Oracle to MySql.

Device portability: 

Being connected on the go is the key to business everywhere. A BI tool that offers device portability that allows analysts to connect to it from any device, be it a mobile phone or tablet, is a feature that is desirable. Also a shared cloud in which the reports are stored and can be accessed from any device using a secure login is much needed. The cloud should also be secure and allow unauthorized persons to access it.

Easy to Learn & Use:  

The tool should be easy to learn. It should require little or no programming abilities from the analysts. The tool should be intuitive and easy to use. The tool should have good user interface. Even though it is simple and easy to use, the tool should be able to process complex queries and provide the results very quickly in the required format.

Support:

Since the analysts possess little programming skills, the support and maintenance of the tools should be taken care of by the providers. There should be exhaustive documentation on how to use the tools and Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs). There should be a 24x7 call center support that takes calls as well as emails and respond quickly. Online communities of the developers and analysts who use the tool should also be made available so that discussions can take place.

Weightage:

Each of the characteristics are given a weightage as shown below:

The weightage for each characteristics is given by considering their importance for a business intelligence tool. Easy to learn and use and scalability/flexibility is given the at most importance because the analyst who will be using the tools are not well versed programmers. The analyst should be able to use the tool without undergoing rigorous training. Also the system should be easily scalable.

Reporting format and security are given equal importance of 15% and device portability and support are given 10% because these features depend on the kind of project and the kind of data used. It also depends on the policy of each company as with device portability, as some companies do not want their employees using personal devices for work.

Weighted Model

Criteria	Weightage	Tableau	Microsoft	IBM	SAS	Oracle
Easy to Lean & Use	25%	10	10	8	10	7
Scalability/Flexibility	25%	9	8	7	9	10
Security	15%	0	0	5	0	4
Reporting Formats	15%	10	10	10	10	10
Device Portability	10%	10	8	10	8	8
Support	10%	10	10	10	10	10
Total	100%	8.25	8	8	8.05	8.15
Rank		1	4	4	3	2

Each of the business intelligence tools are ranked according to the criteria in the above table. More or less all the products have the same total score and the difference is very little. This shows that the competition among the BI tools is very great and that every company is striving it's best to dish out the best possible tool. Thus the analysts are spoiled for choices.

Most of the tools do not provide any security for the data because they rely upon the database to provide the security. On top of that some of the products ensure data security.

All the tools provide excellent support for the analysts. Also all the tools provide optimum reporting formats and extensive visualizations. Also most of the tools provide mobile support and few also provide cloud computing services.

Most of the tools are relatively easy to use and learn. They have been created keeping in mind the analysts with relatively less programming capability.

Microsoft, IBM and Oracle rely heavily upon MS Excel, DB2 and Oracle SQL to provide the database for the data. Microsoft's power BI specifically uses only Excel to import the data from. The Excel exports the data from different databases. This could be advantage for a company dealing with Excel worksheets and at the same time a disadvantage for companies that do not rely on excel. It is the same with IBM and DB2. This causes problems during any database migration or if a new database is to be added for the tool to evaluate. But Oracle provides a good support for the various other database integration and hence it is extremely scalable.

Also it should be noted that the IBM and Oracle tools are little more high tech than the other tools, i.e. to operate the tools in the optimum level, a limited programming experience is desired.

It is also seen that the tools differ from each other only in minor details and can be used interchangeably. But when a tool is to be selected to perform analytics, the data and the business needs have to be taken into consideration. Like if the database is predominantly in Oracle it is better to use the Oracle product or Tableau or SAS. One major advantage of Tableau and SAS is that they do not have any primary databases with which they work with optimum efficiency.

Hence the business needs and comfort level of the analysts should determine the tool. A tool that is wielded correctly will yield the optimum output.

References:

http://www.sas.com/en_us/software/business-intelligence.html#easy-analytics

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/category/business-intelligence

http://www.tableau.com/
http://www.tableau.com/gartner-magic-quadrant-2014
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/powerBI/solutions/capabilities/data-sources.aspx
http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/business-analytics/business-intelligence/enterprise-edition/overview/index.html
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140714162600-95816496-top-5-criteria-for-evaluating-business-intelligence-reporting-and-analytics-software