This page contains a small selection of the Business Intelligence requirements we have used to compare all the 16 major Business Intelligence software solutions that are available in the market. All requirements are explained in more detail in the Business Intelligence Tools Survey 2013 which is available for purchase.
Download the complete list of requirements (169 criteria spread across 12 categories).
You may find the evaluation requirements useful for the selection of a Business Intelligence platform for your own company or customer.
Infrastructure & architecture
This category, which contains 24 Business Intelligence requiremenst, measures how well the Business Intelligence software conforms to your IT infrastructure. Which operating systems and which computers and server platforms are supported, and how the Microsoft Office Integration (2007,2010) is implemented. It also covers important aspects like reusability, caching, zero-footprint, load balancing, fail-over and In-Memory techniques.
Security & connectivity
This category, which contains 14 requirements, covers all aspects regarding the security, single sign-on, authentication, content authorization and so forth. In addition the connectivity is examined. Does the Business Intelligence software have native connectors to a wide range of data sources like SQL Server, Oracle, DB/2, MS Analysis Services (OLAP) et cetera.
Cloud architecture
This category, which contains 7 requirements, covers all aspects regarding running your Business Intelligence software in the cloud. The type of service offering is examined and which cloud models are supported (SaaS, PaaS, etc.). Which third-party Cloud providers sell your Business Intelligence software? Etc.
Mobile Business Intelligence
In this category, which contains 24 Business Intelligence requirements, the support for Mobile Business Intelligence is examined. Does the Business Intelligence software support (native) mobile access? Several requirements were taken into account for example which platforms are supported (iPad, Android, BlackBerry), native support or not, and if the Business Intelligence software support the principle of ‘create a report once; run on every device’ (desktop, laptop, browser, Smartphone, Tablet).
Core functionality
This category, which contains 29 requirements, examines the core functionality (out-of-the-box) of the Business Intelligence software. For example is there support for slowly changing dimensions and role-based dashboarding and reporting? And if so, to what degree? Is basket analysis supported? Are there facilities to export to PDF and Excel? Et cetera.
Performance management & planning
This category covers 13 Business Intelligence requirements about performance management & planning facilities. Is there support for management models like the Balanced Scorecard and strategy maps out-of-the-box? About fifty percent of the Business Intelligence & reporting tools doesn’t have functionality for performance management and planning.
Predictive Analysis & data mining
This category, which contains 7 requirements, examines if and how data and text mining is supported and to what degree. Data mining is widely used to be able to predict behaviour of customers, vendors, webvisitors, employees and so forth. Text mining is generally used to classify Word documents, Twitter messages, webpages, unstructured text, competitor information and other social media profiles.
Usability & visualization
This category, which contains 8 significant requirements, measures the usability of the Business Intelligence software. How easy-to-use and easy-to-learn is the product? Is Mobile Business Intelligence (smartphones, tablets) supported? What type of graphs and visualizations can be used? And so forth.
Performance issues & Big Data
In this category, 13 Business Intelligence requirements are used to measure how well the Business Intelligence software supports techniques to optimize report and dashboard performance and is able to process Big Data. A good response time is really important for the User eXperience (UX) because business users and especially higher management has not much time. Some requirements which are used to evaluate the products are: aggregate awareness, OLAP, MOLAP, ROLAP, reuse of the cache, Big Data connectors, and so forth.
Search & alerting
This category covers 4 requirements about search on data and meta data and it also includes requirements to evaluate the alerting & notification functionality.
Costs & pricing*
This category with 13 Business Intelligence requirements covers all kind of costs related to buying and having a Business Intelligence software. In the Business Intelligence Tools Survey, the Business Intelligence vendors are asked to provide us all kinds of pricing information (100 users, 2000 users, 2 processors, 8 processors), pricing of end-user training, (advanced) designer training and how much you have to pay for support and maintenance. In the Business Intelligence Tools Survey report you’ll only find a summary of the pricing per product, because these prices may vary per country, per company, and depend on if you are already a customer, and also the discount the vendor may be willing to give you at a specific time.
General information
This category, which contains 13 fields/requirements, provides general information about the vendor and the Business Intelligence software like the product name(s) and the version number(s) that are examined. The number of installations worldwide and the number of resellers and partners is also available, but is not included in the Business Intelligence Tools Survey 2013. If you need this information, please feel free to contact us.
