Susan Joly

@e2valpo

April 15, 2015

Win Applause: Select ing a BI Platform That Offers Funct ional i ty and Ease of Use 1

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Easy does it! ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Functionality to support enterprise needs ........................................................................................................................... 2

Build vs. Buy model .................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Stepping up to a winning platform ........................................................................................................................................ 3

Simple success ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Win Applause: Select ing a BI Platform That Offers Funct ional i ty and Ease of Use 2

Overview Central to every solid business intelligence (BI) solution is a platform with easy-to-use functionality that meets vast user needs,

along with the governance, security, and scalability that enterprises require. Ultimately, it is the voice and testimonial of the

customers who are using a given platform that speak volumes.

The Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, conducted annually, was recently published on February 23,

2015. In this research, BI and analytics platform vendors were evaluated based on key customer-survey metrics from 2,083 BI

platform users. The research also highlights marketplace trends, innovations, and forecasts.

This series of articles explores elements that are critical to an effective BI solution, and highlights what we believe Pyramid

Analytics offers in this regard. We heard input from our customers about strengths in Pyramid Analytics’ BI Office platform for

large-scale, governed BI related to the following areas:

Enterprise-grade, end-to-end BI platform—for instance, ability to quickly create a vast range of reports and dashboards,

governed data discovery, analysis capabilities, ease of use, platform integration, metadata management

Successful, large-scale, governed BI programs—for instance, versatile range of dashboards, reporting, and analysis

capabilities, mobile BI

Users at ease with practical business gains— high customer satisfaction, high degree of business benefits achieved

For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

Easy does it! Pressure to perform, the need to use your time wisely so that you prioritize and focus on the tasks and decisions that are most important to the business. There is an increasing requirement in organizations for easy-to-use tools with functionality that enables employees to meet growing pressures to deliver business value. Although employee roles can range widely—non-technical consumers of content, business analysts, BI leaders, developers, business decision-makers, and others—one common denominator is the need to provide business benefits. Thoughtful, data-driven decisions are the backbone of successful organizations and enterprises. Nevertheless, many offerings from BI vendors don’t sufficiently address this requirement for robust functionality that’s also easy to use. This particular need is called out by Gartner in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms: “Growing business user requirements for ease of use, support for users to conduct complex types of analysis, and a fast time to

business benefits are not being well met by vendors that own the large, IT-centric installed base market share.”*

We see that customers are increasingly choosing vendors that appeal to a broader range of BI users, because their platform is easy to use, even though their overall range of product capabilities might not be as broad as larger, IT-centric platforms offer.

For more information, read the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms.

Functionality to support enterprise needs BI is increasingly becoming a must-have in today’s organizations, and democratization of data continues to place access to data in the hands of more and more users—whether they are power users, business users, casual users, or enterprise users/partners/consumers. Consequently, there is an increasing need for products that are easy to use, where employees can quickly be up-and-running. At the same time, the functionality must meet the needs of developers in the IT department and beyond to users such as organizational leaders, BI analysts, BI consumers, and other—both technical and non-technical. In some cases, those who create content might be business decision-makers and their team. Or they could be developers who

create content for large audiences, based on business or content requirements that business decision-makers or subject matter

Win Applause: Select ing a BI Platform That Offers Funct ional i ty and Ease of Use 3

experts (SMEs) give them. In some cases, it might be difficult to find the technical skillset required for creating certain types of

content, and developers are a good bridge, a scenario in which business users work in tandem with IT.

The BI Office Suite from Pyramid Analytics is an enterprise-grade, end-to-end BI platform, regarded for performance, ease of use, end-to-end functionality, being web-ready, and fast results. It’s 100% browser-based, and has the familiar look-and-feel of Microsoft Office.

Customer testimonial indicates that functionality and ease of use—for both developers and end users—are particularly strong attributes of the platform.

Build vs. Buy model In the past, when an organization wanted a new BI solution, they might bring in a partner, conduct analysis, and make adjustments. These were basically tasks in a complicated Build model. In the current BI world, the simpler Buy model is preferred. In this model, you buy the product, install it, and you’re ready to go, without the need for extra analysis and adjustments. To foster this scenario, however, you need a BI platform—not just a tool that a subset of employees might use—that supports enterprise needs from the back end to the front end:

Back end: You need data modeling, data mashup, security, scaling, performance, multi-tenancy vs. a single server

Front end: You need features for advanced analytics, test simulation, custom members, custom sets, and basic reporting

Pyramid Analytics, through BI Office, offers a complete, integrated, scalable platform that’s architected for the spectrum of enterprise needs—for developers and end users—in a secure, governed environment.

Stepping up to a winning platform The following table is a sampling of BI Office features and functionality that support the needs of developers and end users.

Developers End users

Drag and drop: Quickly create and distribute reports that are carefully formatted; display data that’s integrated from many sources

See full presentations and create simple layout templates from dragging in reports, centralized business logic or views; export and view in Microsoft Office applications

Use a drag-and-drop, point-and-click interface for building slides in a web-based application that behaves and looks like a desktop application

Create dashboards and reports once, and deploy everywhere

Access dashboards, reports, and data from everywhere: mobile, desktop, browser, local, on premise, in the cloud. Get reports with latest data delivered automatically, based on scheduling or pre-defined triggers

Win Applause: Select ing a BI Platform That Offers Funct ional i ty and Ease of Use 4

Developers End users

Select level of complexity that users get; can expand and morph data to the way users need it

Customize the UI to whatever level of detail needed; do data mashups, without needing technical skills

Write business logic once, and safely deploy across team or organization; since there’s governance, there’s just one version of the truth

Extend report and share with peers, team, or organization

See what a user has created, expand it, change its security, publish to enterprise

Use simple, point-and-click wizards to set up data sets and data models, with no coding or scripting

With centralized business logic, all BI Office objects are seamlessly connected including charting, graphing, and data, which keeps data accurate and consistent; can focus on one platform vs. separate tools

Apply interactive visualizations (created from data wizards) to new data; no scripting required; through data discovery, get drill-down, and ranking tools that provide advanced analytics without programming

Allow users to make changes on the screen; have everything saved centrally and replicated on related reports

Use wizards to build a shareable data model; analyze, form insights, and report on it within minutes; no coding needed

Simple success A viable BI platform needs to be easy to use and deploy, and offer quick time to business benefits. A platform whose functionality enables the relatively non-technical user—from the CXO, business decision-makers, unit managers, data consumers—yet that is robust enough for analysts in the BI department and developers in the IT department will stand out on the BI stage. Life isn’t always simple, but your BI platform should make it as powerfully simple as possible.

*Gartner, Predicts 2015: Power Shifts in Business Intelligence and Analytics Will Fuel Disruption. Josh Parenteau, Neil Chandler, Rita L. Sallam, Douglas Laney,

Alan D. Duncan, 21 Nov. 2014

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those

vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should

not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of

merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.