What to focus on when choosing a Business Intelligence tool?
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This guide helps businesses choose the right business intelligence (BI) tool by outlining key factors such as data visualization, user needs, and provider types. It distinguishes between 'pure-play' solutions and traditional 'mega-vendors', highlighting the importance of evaluating organizational requirements and potential costs. The document also addresses considerations for small and medium businesses, particularly regarding data warehousing and the growing integration of data analytics tools.
What to focus on when choosing a Business Intelligence tool?
- 1. What to focus on when choosing a Business Intelligence tool? A BUYER’S GUIDE Follow us on @Marketplanet_EN
- 2. With data diversification and various data visualisation me- thods, it is difficult to select the tool that will best meet our expectations from the wide rage of available options. The aim of this Guide is to: present selected crucial issues of the Business Intelligen- ce area identify leading solutions related to Data Warehouses indicate leading providers in the area of data visualisa- tion and discovery Contents of the Guide: 3 Introduction 4 Business Intelligence market 6 BI providers 8 Pure-plays vs. mega-vendors 10 With or without a data warehouse? 12 Data visualisation and discovery 13 Tools for SMB, but not only 2
- 3. 3 The latest Gartner Business Intelligence report shows that the main objective of BI software purchasers is to exploit Big Data as far and as effectively as possible. The main obstacle companies face is not technical and vi- sualisation capabilities of Business Intelligence tools and not data base support, but it is the fact that the majority of companies fail to accurately evaluate their business ne- eds in this area. While technical aspects are naturally impor- tant for IT departments, business users often select tools exclusively based on the opinion from the market, and fail IT chooses technology; Business monitors the market. Is that the best way? to consider important details. Their analysis is limited to Gartner’s quadrant for BI, with the most focus on the ease of use. They choose user-friendly tools that allow for data analysis and “submitting queries” without the involvement of the IT department. In fact, the best BI implementations come from the synergy between the IT department and the business. In this Guide, we present a selection of best practices advi- sable to consider when selecting the most suitable Business Intelligence solution. Introduction
- 4. Noticeably, the market of Business Intelligence tools is divi- ded into two groups of providers. The first group are “pure-play” category providers who offer tools focused on specific product and business areas and clearly oriented towards business recipients, e.g. in the area of data visualisation. The second group - “integrated, traditional, so-called mega- -vendors” - offer a significantly broader range of tools that may additionally cover elements ranging from data wareho- uses, visualisations or analyses to planning and budgeting. Therefore, among leading Business Intelligence providers we will find those who deliver traditional tools as well as “pu- re-play” producers such as QlikView and Tableau. Business Intelligence market 4
- 5. The leading providers to the BI market are: Qlik Tableau Microstrategy SAS Institute IBM Oracle Microsoft SAP FICO Information Builders Given the diversity of Business Intelligence technology pro- viders, it is essential for a business to identify its own needs related to: Key recipients of analyses and data Analytical and reporting requirements Presentation layers and mobility requirements Data volumes and the question whether to build a data warehouse or use association data models or subject-area data marts instead The possibility to combine different sources of data effortlessly 5 Leading BI providers What should be considered when selecting a BI solution? „Pure-play” providers or „traditional” BI?
- 6. If there is a data warehouse or repository already in place or if a company uses BI class tools, then it would seem unjusti- fied to implement a new technology of BI mega-vendor for e.g. data visualisation and discovery. A provider would work towards redevelopment of the data warehouse with applica- tion of its own tools, and argument that it is for ensuring the integrity of technology in its broad sense. On the other hand, for organisations who decide to imple- ment a BI system for the first time, it would be reasonable to consider a provider that offers traditional integrated so- lutions with a number of tools, from management and con- struction of data warehouses, advanced data analyses and exploitation to planning and budgeting. For such buyers, it may be more reasonable to select this kind of solution to carry out the undertaking, provided that it is economically justified. In general, however, such solutions are far more expensive and require more time for imple- mentation. When deciding between a “pure-play” and a „mega-vendor”, it is advisable to “stock take” the tools and technologies a company has in use. „Pure-plays” vs. mega-vendors 6
- 7. 7 Enterprise class solutions „mega-vendors” ADVANTAGES Improved capabilities of data warehousing Integration of many databases including Hadoop Ability to analyse vast amounts of data sets Supporting a large number of users DISADVANTAGES Low satisfaction of business users More expensive user licenses It may take more time to have a query to a database replied They require aggregated and “pre-arranged” data waithing for the user Migration processes are more complex It requires highly-advanced devices and a number of server installations It is necessary to have specialist knowledge on data warehousing Specialist „pure-play” solutions ADVANTAGES Highly-developed and advanced data analyses and visualisations Intuitive tools for data uploading from different data sources Facilitated implementation Lower maintenance costs Satisfaction of business users Simplified migration of solutions DISADVANTAGES Storing capabilities limited to hardware resources A cost per user may be higher than at the beginning of the project Functionality may be limited in a stand-alone scenario Advantages and disadvantages of tools
- 8. 8 With or without a data warehouse? The validity of creating EDW has been lately called into qu- estion. In the past, BI vendors convinced companies that it was necessary to build data warehouses for storing all data from different operating systems in one central location. Over the years and with the growing awareness of business, the amount of so-called “pure data” has been decreasing and replaced by a constantly growing amount of unspecified data. In the context of EDW building, the integrity of such data be- comes unworkable or difficult to perform due to the variety of new sources of data, in particular, the unstructured data from social media. To address this variety of data and ever-changing business needs, the Hadoop software has been developed. It allows for exposing data from EDW or versatile sources of data for databases oriented towards more detail analyses. Hadoop enables a company to collect data for analysis from traditio- nal relative bases or data warehouses without the need to use a schema. In this way, “row” data may be aggregated from almost any source, without the time-consuming and burden- some activities of data cleaning. Architects also raise their doubts about whether any form of EDW could find application in business. The low flexibility of transformation, cleaning or uploading data certainly does not encourage companies to use it. This trend has also been no- ted in the latest Gartner’s report. According to analysts, 85% of currently operating data warehouses will loose their capa- bility to adjust to the increasing amount of data and methods of its processing and presentation within the next two years. However, many companies still use the data warehouse ar-
- 9. 9 What other aspects should be considered? Scalability: The solution may be easily integrated with new sources of data to capture significant increase of data volumes Access: Possibility to easily configure access to data to adjust it to company’s bu- siness needs. Support: Technical and functional support services rendered by the provider Implementation: Many enterprises still choose local providers of data wareho- uses due to profitability aspects. chitecture due to its capability to provide accurate data for data mining at the lowest level of information. Considering the diversity of unstructured data, it has become increasingly popular in the Business Intelligence environment to integrate Hadoop into solutions offered by one of provi- ders. Such integrations gain in importance, especially in the case of companies who regularly process vast amounts of data. Proof of Concept – a good practice Top EDW providers Before selecting a data warehouse provider, the best practi- ce would be to conduct a proof of concept. A company gives access to real or untrue data, depending on its security poli- cy, and creates a small data warehouse to run a pilot project. In this way, both of the parties enjoy the opportunity to as- sess potential issues or the level and quality of cooperation prior to actual implementation. IBM TeraData SAP Oracle SAS
- 10. Data visualisation is one of the most popular Business Intel- ligence tools. The growing demand for visualisation results from the increase in the number of business users and their desire to obtain access to reports without the need to enga- ge the IT department. Visualisation tools such as dashboards and scorecards may cooperate with data warehouses or store them, but in a si- gnificantly less volumes than EDW. Visualisation tools are focused on improving a user’s expe- rience by promoting Self-Service BI. Consequently, they in- crease the freedom business users enjoy in their analytical activities. Data visualisation tools may also include complex analytical functionalities such as data modelling and uploading. Such tools often go beyond historical and current data visualisa- tions, and are able to predict future behaviours of clients. In many cases, visualisation tools allow for the analysis of unstructured data through integration with Hadoop. Data visualisation and discovery 10
- 11. 11 It is also becoming increasingly popular to publish analytical solutions in the Cloud. However, in the Polish market, such activities develop at a significantly slower pace due to the permanent “fear” of enterprises about the data security and access. Business users do not always represent the same employee profiles. Corporate environments, marketing, controlling or sale departments often employ so-called data experts who would like to use BI for advanced normative analyses rela- ted to econometrics, statistics. In medium organisations, users are focused on creating a style template for reports and simply activating their analyses in a planned manner. In its best form, data visualisation may help an organisation to conduct real-time analyses so that it is able to quickly re- spond to its clients’ behaviours. Individual data visualisation and discovery platforms should also offer the possibility to integrate with generally accepted authentication and autho- risation methods to ensure security. Leading pure-play providers Qlik Tableau ClearStory LogiAnalytics LavaStorm Analytics SAP Lumira To visualise or not?
- 12. Solutions for small and medium businesses, but not only Traditional Business Intelligence solutions offered by global providers may be out of reach for small and medium enter- prises due to the need to build data warehouses. As the in-memory processing expands, many systems allow for storing and processing of large volumes of data using the RAM, without the need to have a centralised data storage. Such systems exploit the tools of tabular association data models that enable data compression to the maximum level of 10-12/1 and, in practice, to about 6-7/1. The pioneer and leader in the market of data compression and in-memory processing is Qlik® that has developed and continuously im- proved this technology since 1993. In its resent report, Dell stated that 41% of medium enter- prises run at least one BI + Big Data project, while 55% is planning to start one in the nearest future. 12
- 13. 13 BI in RAM. Is it sufficient? The answer is: Yes, but not in the „Big Data” sense. At this point, it is important to emphasise that Big Data and Busi- ness Intelligence are not synonyms. In fact, Big Data is the source of BI, and not its fundamental element. BI existed long before Big Data, and brought incredible results, whi- le Big Data emerged relatively not long ago and is related to such elements as data volumes, unstructured data, so- cial media or weather report service to improve data-based inference. For small companies who do not require all the above-mentioned components, Big Data, BI is of enormous importance. Each organisation that owns data that can be used for creating and developing competitiveness should have BI. Data analysis does not have to exceed data volu- mes to be effective. It just needs to lead to solving a business problem. Small companies are definitely able to draw much meaningful nformation from their data, even if it is only data from weather report services combined with transactional data to build knowledge about clients’ behaviours. This kind of analytical intelligence may still explore great business op- portunities for an organisation. Is a BI solution a reasonable option for small and medium businesses?
- 14. Leading providers to the SMB sector Leading providers of analytical tools for the SMB sector are Qlik, Tableau or Birst. They offer similar technologies, but it is worthwhile to look into advantages and disadvantages of individual solutions to meet particular business needs. However, considering the number of functionalities, the most advisable choice for data visualisa- tion combined with heterogeneous data sources are definitely the tools by Qlik® . The Qlik® company offers data analysis and visualisation to en- sure that insights and data transparency are available when they needed the most: at the decision-taking time. In this way, decisions for the entire organisation are made with confiden- ce, while its business analysts and specialist employees beco- me irreplaceable professionals. Qlik has always been focused on innovative solutions that follow the ever-changing require- ments of both individual users and entire organisations. Qlik is a pioneer and leader in the Data Discovery segment, which has been confirmed by independent analytical companies. 14
- 15. Marketplanet (Otwarty Rynek Elektroniczny S.A.) 49 Domaniewska Street 02-672 Warsaw, Poland phone (+48) 22 576 88 00 fax (+48) 22 576 88 01 [email protected] www.marketplanet.eu Learn more at www.marketplanet.eu Read more on the Marketplanet Blog Follow us on @Marketplanet_EN Author: Damian Skipioł, Cooperation: Karolina Kruba, Katarzyna Kęcka