5. Do I Need to Hire a BI Consultant?
John Remby’s latest blog post examines how it often saves time and money in the total cost of a project to hire an expert consultant for all or part of it to ensure the end result delivers the business goals you set out to achieve. A good project in one area of the business can then be replicated in other areas using the best practices set up by an expert.
4. How to Avoid the Pitfalls of a New BI Implementation
John highlights what can go wrong and how to avoid an enterprise wide BI implementation failing by taking a phased approach.
The latest blog in this month’s “Ask the Consultant” makes a lot of sense and his advice is well worth heeding. I particularly like the section on Validation!
3. How Do I Expedite My Project Development?
When it comes to speeding up development of your business intelligence (BI) project (while still delivering the right end result), there’s one phase of the project that’s critical to get right: defining the project specifications. John Remby shares a 4-Step process to help you get it right.
2. 10 Things a BI Consultant Should Tell You Before Your Project Begins
John Remby’s second post in his series “Ask the Consultant” contains invaluable advice for any organisation about to implement a BI platform – 10 ways to save you time, money and avoid frustration, leading to a smooth, successful and low cost installation.
1. 7 Questions You Should Ask Before Hiring a BI Consultant
The Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study, published by Dresner Advisory Services, LLC, recently came out and has been circulating around the office. Of course I checked it out since (shameless plug) Dimensional Insight ranked #1 in the study.
On the whole I found the report interesting, but I was mostly drawn to the section on consulting. This is only natural – since I am a consultant (and a competitive one at that), I wanted to see how we stacked up against the competition. I was happy to see that our score of 4.68 in quality and value of consulting services meant that we not only outscored all vendors in our market segment, but we also outscored every other vendor in every other market segment, even the big boys. In fact, the larger firms actually had some of the worst consulting scores, which goes to show that bigger isn’t always better.
This got me to thinking, what makes for a good consultant? How do you tell the good from the bad? If I’m asking these questions, then surely users of business intelligence (BI) tools must be wondering the same thing. That led me to develop the following list of 7 questions you should ask before hiring a BI consultant. This is not the be-all and end-all list of questions to ask, but they should help you get the ball rolling as you begin your selection process.