What BI tools and platforms are best for your needs?

1 Business goals and use cases

The first step in choosing BI tools and platforms is to define your business goals and use cases. What are the main questions you want to answer with data? Who are the users and stakeholders of the BI solutions? What are their roles, skills, and expectations? How will they access and interact with the data? How often and in what format do they need reports and dashboards? By clarifying your business goals and use cases, you can narrow down your options and focus on the features and functionalities that matter most.

3 Data analysis and visualization

Another important factor is the data analysis and visualization. How do you explore, manipulate, and interpret the data? What are the analytical methods and techniques you need, such as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, or prescriptive analytics? What are the visualization options and styles you prefer, such as charts, graphs, maps, tables, or gauges? How do you customize, filter, drill-down, or slice-and-dice the data? You need to choose BI tools and platforms that can support your data analysis and visualization needs, such as query languages, functions, formulas, calculations, aggregations, filters, parameters, alerts, annotations, and interactivity.

4 Data collaboration and delivery

The final factor to consider is the data collaboration and delivery. How do you share and communicate the data insights with others? What are the channels and formats of data delivery, such as web, mobile, email, PDF, or embedded? How do you enable collaboration and feedback among users and stakeholders, such as comments, annotations, ratings, or workflows? How do you manage the access and permissions of the data and reports, such as roles, groups, or authentication? You need to choose BI tools and platforms that can facilitate your data collaboration and delivery needs, such as publishing, scheduling, exporting, embedding, notifications, subscriptions, and security.

Choosing BI tools and platforms is not a one-size-fits-all decision. It depends on your specific business goals and use cases, data sources and integration, data analysis and visualization, and data collaboration and delivery. By considering these factors, you can find the best BI tools and platforms for your needs.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?