Business Intelligence Network - The Vision for BI and Beyond

Selecting the best BI platform and establishing it as your organization's standard ensures strong ROI by reducing total BI tool acquisition, implementation, and training costs and allowing your organization to achieve useful results sooner. This white paper offers criteria and guidelines for selecting the most appropriate BI platform for your needs. It helps your organization better evaluate its alternatives and assists your evaluation team in making an intelligent and appropriate BI choice. Ultimately, your choice appeals to all your organization's constituencies, including the IT department, technical and nontechnical business users and analysts, and corporate finance.

This white paper focuses on the factors your organization should consider when selecting a BI vendor and establishing its products as its BI standard. While every organization's needs are likely to be somewhat different, there are criteria that, in general, apply to all of them. The criteria for BI selection groups into four major categories:

• Functional capabilities
• Infrastructure requirements
• Vendor criteria
• Cost-effectiveness