Top 8 Factors to Consider for the Right BI Solution Part 2: Agnostic & Insightful

This marks part 2 of our top 8 factors series. If you are thinking about getting a BI solution for your company, you must consider if the solution is agnostic and insightful. If you are implementing a BI software, which typically takes 60 days or less, ChristianSteven will work with you to easily configure the system to mirror the workflows in your environment. Once operational, the solution can talk to any database or system. In fact, you can have thousands of reports talking to thousands of databases. The CSS BI Solution works behind the scenes to ensure your data is accurate, secure, and delivered on time with the same look and feel, regardless of native application. 

3. Agnostic… your data source is irrelevant: The solution must have the ability to analyze and report on data from multiple sources.

• Most BI and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems offer reporting functionality, but the reports are limited to the data housed within that particular system. Also, the majority of these systems are not designed to interface with unlike applications, to adapt to individual workflows, or to provide cross-functional report distribution.
• Like most organizations, you’ve probably accumulated a multitude of applications and you're now faced with inconsistent or missing data. The inability to interface with all of the applications is costing you valuable time and compromising data integrity. Before making an initial or further investment, ensure your BI solution can communicate seamlessly and allow you to make quick changes that accommodate your specific organization’s guidelines and needs.

4. Insightful…you deliver value to the right people, place, and time: The solution must have the ability to rapidly and flexibly distribute insights to key stakeholders in a personalized way.

• As your organization expands, so does the pressure to deliver cross-functional information to validate critical strategic decisions. You can have a BI solution with the most elaborate reporting features on the markets, but if it requires you to build and configure distribution lists and manually add them to a server, you’re losing a lot of time and money, and you're weakening the security and integrity of your data.

• You need a solution that can function as a centralized distribution hub. The solution should be able to operate in a wide variety of environments including dedicated servers, virtual machines, and cloud environments. The BI solution should also be able to support different protocols and formats and provide a a seamless user experience, delivering the information based on the end user’s preferences.

• A closed system is a closed system. Eventually, the costs of operating in silos will exceed the initial investment in a flexible solution that will deliver meaningful information at the precise moment it is needed without causing a disruption in your internal processes.

To learn more about the rest of the top 8 factors and the three guiding principles, download our latest eBook: "The BI Buyers Guide" today.