A Q&A with Santa, and Fleet Manager Mrs Claus, of North Pole Inc
Fleet firms have a vast amount of data available to them from a huge range of??sources. Business intelligence (BI) tools are designed to help them sift useful information from all this material.?? With the imminent launch of our new BI solution, Adaptive Intelligence, we look at 7 software characteristics firms should take into account when selecting a modern BI tool.
- EASY TO USE AND TO IMPLEMENT
Intuitive design is a necessity. It means that when a user sees it, they know exactly what to do, so using your BI tool should be just as easy as it is to use your smartphone.
- INDUSTRY SPECIFIC
It makes sense for you to ask for advice from people inside your industry regarding business aspects requiring specific knowledge or expertise. The same applies when it comes to BI tools. Industry expertise in a business intelligence tool ensures that your data is analysed in a manner relevant to your business and your industry and takes into account needs that other industries may not utilise. Look for industry specific insights and analysis the BI tool can provide.
- VISUAL
The biggest issue with business intelligence tools is not about getting the most data in one place, but rather getting insights out of the right data. A great way to test the visual capability of a BI tool is to write down the questions you need answering and see how it visually represents the answer. If the resulting graph doesn't give you the insight you need, move on to a different solution.
- REAL-TIME
Traditional systems require a lot of resources and often can't give you the right answer when you need it. Modern BI platforms are now capable of showing results in real time. Be sure to select a tool that auto syncs with your raw data ??? in real time.
- SECURE
Data security and privacy is a major concern for almost every organisation nowadays. Data encryption, access control mechanisms, password complexity are some of the tactics preventing unauthorised access. Be sure to look at the level of security offered by the BI vendor you are willing to subscribe to.
- AFFORDABLE
There's really no reason why you should have to spend large sums of money on your BI tool. Additionally, when choosing your BI tool, make sure you find out the "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) that includes detailed implementation costs and on-going maintenance costs. Chances are that if you're looking at a tool with high start-up costs and long lead times, it's not the most modern solution.
- INCLUSIVE
Today's BI solutions and dashboard tools are designed to empower data analysts and decision-enablers. ??A smart BI tool, however, should be designed to empower everyone in the organisation???including non-technical business leaders that drive decisions.
These 7 factors are a good basic checklist when picking a BI tool for an organisation of any size. At Navman Wireless, these 6 (and more) are already part of our service. If you're looking for business intelligence software for fleet management, give us a try.