8 Steps to BI Success - Choosing The Ideal Business Intelligence Solution

8 S t e p s t o B I S u c c e ss

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Choosing the Ideal Business
Intelligence Solution
Today’s digital world has released an explosion of data, and Business Intelligence (BI) is evolving.
Innovative companies now rely on Business Intelligence to instantly assimilate, transform and
analyze this endless stream of information to make perfectly-timed business decisions. Choosing
the perfect BI solution to ensure your company thrives and maintains a competitive edge into the
future may be daunting – it can seem like a big mountain to climb.
Choosing the Ideal... 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Summary About IntelliFront BI™

Get Onboard
In times past, cost and complexity of BI may have
outweighed any perceived payback, but the future is now,
and it’s essential to emphasize the value of company
data to everyone in your organization. Make sure that
everyone’s clued up and ready for the coming transition.
Get Flowing
The key to BI sustainability and success is to ensure data
is flowing smoothly through every internal and external
system in your organization. Critical strategic choices
should only be made on comprehensive information; then
you can expect the best results. Ensure you are harnessing
data from every endpoint - including those on the horizon.
Get Automated
So, your company understands the value of its data, and
that this data is harvested at every point and opportunity.
Now you can concentrate on sharing the right information
with the right people at the right time and place. Manual
report distribution is a sure-fire way to sabotage your
entire BI strategy and bottom line; automation is simply
the only path to take for secure, efficient and reliable
delivery – but which tool do you choose?
Climb the 8 Steps to BI Success...
With dozens of BI solutions available, what are the ‘must-
haves’? What features will bring you the quickest time to
value plus meet the flexibility, scalability and budgetary
needs of your organization?
No pressure – but the BI solution you invest in today has
far-reaching implications for your organization’s success
tomorrow.
So strap on those crampons as we scale those eight
essential steps to take in making your big decision – let’s
get your company equipped for the future and performing
at its peak!

1. Secure Yet Accessible
Your BI tool should be both flexible enough
to allow authorized individuals to access it
from anywhere AND 100% tamper, reverse
engineering and intrusion-proof.
Your data is your greatest asset so, naturally, the very
first step to take is a cautionary one – how secure is
this BI solution? Does it provide several layers of role-
based access management protocols? Does it integrate
with Windows Active Directory to allow you to terminate
immediately access when an employee leaves your
organization? Does it restrict report parameters, encrypt
the report output, require authentication before report
access, and apply an expiration date? It should also
include a comprehensive audit system that tracks and
records every user and system action.

2. Ensure Data Integrity
Equally important and a key component
of your data’s security is its integrity and
compliance with industry standards.
The solution must ensure data integrity and compliance.
One minor user error, inability to manage access, or
missed regulatory input and you can easily end up paying
the cost on multiple levels.
With this in mind, your BI solution must be highly
configurable to fit your business compliance standards
such as HIPAA, FERPA, and SOX as well as the compliance
needs of your infrastructure. Find out if the solution can
archive report data with the exact runtime it is generated
by the system, user or administrator. Investigate its
disaster recovery options to ensure the system will
recover from major failures and data loss. Finally, request
a detailed analysis of the solution’s scalability functions –
can it accommodate your organization’s traffic and load
balancing needs?

3. Seamless Data Sources
Your data source is irrelevant - the
solution must analyze/report on data
from multiple sources.
Like most organizations, you’ve probably accumulated
a multitude of applications across your various lines of
business. To avoid the expensive pitfalls of inconsistent
and missing data, ensure your chosen BI solution can
communicate seamlessly across all your systems and will
allow you to make ‘on the fly’ changes that accommodate
your guidelines and needs.
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 were not designed to
interface easily with separate applications, flexibly
adapt to individual workflows or provide cross-functional
report distribution.

4. Insightful & Flexible
Deliver value to the right people in the right
place at the right time.
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 market, but if it
requires you to build and configure specific distribution
lists and manually add them to a server, then you’re losing
time, money and weakening the security and integrity of
your data.
The solution must have the ability to rapidly and
flexibly distribute insights to the primary stakeholders
in a personalized way. It should function as a
centralized distribution hub, operating in a wide variety
of environments including dedicated servers, virtual
machines, and the cloud. It should support different
protocols and formats and provide a seamless user
experience – delivering the information based on the
end user’s preference.
The bottom line is a closed system is a closed system.
Eventually, the costs of operating in silos will far outweigh
the investment in a flexible solution that can deliver
meaningful information at the precise moment it is needed
without causing a disruption in your internal processes.

5. Easy To Use
The solution should be quick to deploy
and easy to use for the company and
its customers.
A sophisticated BI solution doesn’t have to mean a
cumbersome deployment or a headache to its users.
In fact, once a server with basic pre-requisites is in place,
it should only require a few minutes to install and
configure. Multi-server deployments, a combination of
database/client configurations, failover, and other setups,
should be options - not requirements.
From an end-user standpoint, the features and functions
of the solution should be obvious and easily customizable
to fit an individual’s workflow. Remember, you want your
executives and staff to embrace your BI solution. With
proper training, even the most non-technical users should
be able to deploy, manage, schedule and view reports
quickly. This empowers users and removes the barriers
typically encountered with the rollout of a new solution.

6. Enhances Existing Systems
The solution should take what you have,
and makes it what you need – it must
be designed to leverage your existing IT
investments and resources.
Ask whether the solution has a fully integrated web service
and API framework that will allow you to combine the BI
functionality with your existing applications and systems.
Most organizations have heavily invested in core systems
that have stretched their budget and IT resources. Still,
the demands of new customer SLAs and ‘on the fly’
KPI reports continue to increase. Instead of completely
changing your existing BI infrastructure or practices,
your BI solution should be able to adapt quickly to your
business environment. For example, it should have the
ability to leverage your existing servers and hardware and
not require dedicated staff to implement and manage it.
Ideally, the solution provider will offer comprehensive
installation services enabling you to implement a complete
BI infrastructure without taxing your existing human
resources. It should also use industry standards (e.g.
connecting to ODBC compliant databases) and APIs rather
than relying on proprietary languages and technology.
Avoid reinventing the wheel when there’s no need for
complex configurations and setup.

7. Scales With Your Company
The solution should meet you where you
are and anticipate where you’re going - it
must scale as your business evolves without
breaking the bank.
There are risks associated with any technology
investment and, many times, there are transactional
fees buried deep in the fine print. It’s critical to ensure
your BI solution can scale as your business changes and
not cost you a fortune. Make sure the pricing is value-
based instead of transactional-based. As your reporting
volume increases, the incremental cost of adding a report
to the system should go down in comparison to the price.
The more you leverage the solution, the more you should
save, not spend.
Ask if there’s an onsite proof of concept (POC) program
where you can use the solution with your live data and
reports. Determine your pre-POC baseline metrics and
then track the time savings associated with automated
versus manual report distribution. The right solution
should be able to deliver measurable value in 30 days
or less. Make it a requirement that you should be able
to immediately go-live using this POC system if it meets
your approval.

8. Loyal & Dependable
Choose a partner that’s in it for the long
haul - the BI solution provider must have a
track record of customer loyalty and a team
to back you up.
Investment in a vendor’s technology is an investment
in the vendor. Find out what drives the provider. Is it
customer satisfaction or closing the next deal? Who was
the vendor’s first customer? Are they still a customer?
Why or why not? Do they have full-time resources
dedicated to account management, customer experience
and consulting? Ask if there’s a specific revenue number
a customer has to hit before they are assigned an
account manager.
In the event of a system issue, ensure you will receive top
tier support as soon as you contact the provider. Enquire
about their support staff’s level of system knowledge and
whether chat by video is an option.
Last - but not least - find out about the ongoing support
model. Do they deploy customer-specific patches,
scheduled software updates and version upgrades? If so,
how will you be notified?

Summary
We live in an increasingly data-driven world,
and all businesses need to apply an optimal BI
strategy to secure their future in this climate.
Whether you are taking a first step toward implementing
a BI infrastructure or currently have one in place, getting
the most out of your data is essential to your success.
Remember to get everyone onboard by educating about
the critical role data plays in your business, get your data
flowing from every corner of your business and then get
automating - arm your employees and customers with
insights at the right place and time.

IntelliFront BI™ will be released in the second quarter of 2016.
About IntelliFront BI
™
With ChristianSteven’s IntelliFront BI™
, you can eliminate administrative bottlenecks with
self-service business intelligence. Sophisticated yet simple, our IntelliFront BI™
is flexible, scalable,
and database-agnostic, enabling you to connect to multiple data sources across your enterprise
and centrally manage all of your report distribution.

During implementation - typically completed in 1 day or
less - we 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. IntelliFront BI™ 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.
For individuals who need immediate access to
information from laptops & mobile devices, IntelliFront BI™
offers an easy-to-use gallery that allows users to log in,
create and run reports, view & modify dashboards on the
fly and respond to real-time KPI cards with rich, interactive
drill-downs and insights. Depending on your organizational
needs, our solution can be used as your complete BI
infrastructure or to complement your existing investments.
We’re experts in helping organizations automate and
deliver Business Intelligence processes so that actionable
information is delivered at the precise moment it’s
needed. Rather than spending time and resources
exporting BI reports, updating BI databases and executing
manual BI processes, let ChristianSteven handle it for you.
ChristianSteven Software LLC
11020 David Taylor Dr, Suite 317
Charlotte NC 28262, USA
(888) 781-8966
info@christiansteven.com
www.christiansteven.com
Contact us
today for a
complimentary
BI assessment.

8 Steps to BI Success - Choosing The Ideal Business Intelligence Solution

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