Beye Network on BI Usability

The Beye Network recently published a research paper on “Ease of Use and Interface Appeal” in BI. Some IT types may not be focused on these concepts but we think they are critical considerations for enabling user-centric BI delivery and intuitive, easy-to-consume BI tools – a point we explored here.

Forget aesthetics, this is all about usability. As the report concludes, “When BI is easy to use, it is more widely adopted.”

We think this topic is important and so wanted to highlight what we saw as the most revealing findings:

• Ease of use rated higher than “specific tool capabilities and analytic power” which “makes it a critical aspect to making BI more pervasive”
• “Power users rate BI tools as more difficult to use than casual users” – this may seem counterintuitive, but power users are more likely to be frustrated by sub-par self-service tools or limited report-building capabilities, which often result from failure to architect the BI layer during implementation.
• Including Office-like interfaces can be a good way to make users comfortable engaging BI tools – handy tools (like data simulation worksheets) also help.
• Easy-to-use interfaces are increasingly valued by IT personnel – e.g, authoring tools for creating BI content, like reports and dashboards; however, the interfaces used to author reports are currently the least appealing.
• Users want more training on how to use tools.

Our experience confirms the findings. We believe user-friendly, attractive and intuitive interfaces can be strong drivers of BI growth generally and a boon to BI delivery, too. And they will be increasingly important criteria for buyers as they evaluate their many options.

The critical question then becomes, how do you get there? We believe real usability gains come from properly architecting the BI layer.  Often, BI implementations skip consideration of usability during this step, which results in complaints from power users about poor authoring environments.