Businesses grow when data is enhanced into useful information that is further converted into implementable knowledge. Using Business Intelligence is an added advantage to gain from industries by understanding the customer needs, their decision making processes and technological trends. BI involves the analysis of the entire industry along with the participating customers and other stakeholders as a component. The organizations drive their BI tools with their predefined goals that may be either short-term or long-term to achieve and stand along.

The word ‘Business Intelligence’ was first mentioned in Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ which claimed that to win a war you must have the complete knowledge and understanding about the strengths and weaknesses of yourself as well as of your enemy. This has become the nucleus of modern business intelligence. A company must know itself and its customers better than anyone else. Simultaneously, it must keep an eagle’s eye upon its competitors. It is important to strategically sieve through bulk data to devise a plan to fulfil the goals of the company.

Assessment of the current status of business is done by implementing Key Performance Indicators, commonly known as KPIs. Availability of data has become speedy due to more and more implementation of KPI. Business Intelligence involves collection and analysis of data. Collection of data is done through data tools such as – data modelling, data mining and data warehouses. These tools help employees to work upon data efficiently. For data analysis, we use Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), commonly known as Analytics. It is based on dimensional analysis and hypercube.

Apart from these, some companies also use softwares for BI tools. Tableau consultants suggest companies to seek software vendors for Business Intelligence tools to supervise existing ERPs. This helps in analyzing historic, current and trending data for preparing strategies for development of the business. Vendors also provide Tableau consulting to professionals in analyzing company data and results. Business intelligence is all about knowing the market, including competitors and market trends to engage new customers, retain old ones and accomplish a positive growth rate in business.

When do you need a BI consultant? Well, there are many scenarios, such as,

• When you have data that you want to analyze to help you take business decisions
• When you want to grow your analytics culture into a fully matured enterprise-level deployment
• When you want to work with a complex data source to generate meaningful dashboards templates

But, before getting any outside help to accomplish the above-mentioned big goals, it is important that you think about the following parameters. These parameters help you in choosing the right Tableau consultant that is able to fulfill all your needs and your project.

Jot-down all your requirements

Before hiring any BI consultant, it is essential that you note down all your requirements. You should try to think from a long run perspective rather than short-term. Most of the companies release Request for Information (RFI) before Request for Proposal (RFP) to understand and gain most of the information required for an ideal solution against their problems.

Evaluate a consultant

Before hiring, evaluating a candidate is a major task! All Tableau consultants have their unique experiences and at times it becomes difficult to find a right candidate for your organization. The best option will be to make contact with a Tableau expert through a trade show or any convention.

Tip: A good consultant will always listen to your requirements carefully, and then try to build up a rapport with you. When you talk to them about your requirements, they will take you in the right direction.

Steps to initiate the work

After selecting the Tableau consultant, the next course of action is to bring all the stakeholders in a room to discuss the project and the particulars of your organization. A good consultant can become successful by grasping more knowledge about all the processes. The more requirements you give, the better they become in their work.

Note down the next course of action

Once you achieve a certain set of goals, start planning for the next set of goals. The more you plan and take actions on your plans, the better you can become in achieving the long-term goals.

Involve your BI or Tableau consultants for their opinion and understand from them about the next course of action.

In the end

There are a lot of BI consultants in the Delhi NCR region that can help you in achieving your goals. But before you initiate the hiring process, make sure that they share the same passion as your organization for analyzing the data and are willing to look at things in a detailed fashion so that you can achieve the desired business goals via analytics.