You’ve agreed the objectives for your business intelligence (BI) system, KPIs are set, the budget’s been approved and you’re looking forward to measuring, analysing and enhancing your business performance.

Now, how to ensure the system delivers the benefits you need? The answer lies in having a strong technical infrastructure, where technology is used to support business requirements - and not the other way around. There’s nothing more frustrating than a flashy piece of tech that nobody can use.

Technology must be designed to work for you. This 9 point checklist highlights the key technical infrastructure features of a powerful business intelligence system. Use this guide and you’ll be well on your way to enjoying the advantage of being data driven.

1. Capacity and scalability

   Data storage capacity must be easily scalable. As your company grows and more data sources become available and requirements expand, additional storage capacity will be needed. The technology must be flexible, allowing you to start small and grow over time without the need for expensive and time consuming hardware upgrades, replacement or migration to new platforms.

2. Compatibility and integration

   The BI system must be able to integrate with a wide range of data sources (i.e. file based, database, API and direct stream) and data visualisation tools.

3. Cost and efficiency

   The technology used must be cost effective regardless of  your data capacity requirements.

4. Availability and reliability

   Target a 99.5% uptime as usage of the system is likely to be sporadic – unlike transactional sites where systems are in constant use and require a 99.95% uptime.

5. Freedom and minimal lock-in

   The stack must be based on widely available and open source standards. This keeps the ecosystem easier and cheaper to maintain and develop further.

6. Management and maintenance

   Management and maintenance of the technology must be automated wherever possible. This can be achieved by using managed cloud services.

7. Performance

   Performance capability must be maintained regardless of volume of data and processing requirements. If you have particularly complex computational requirements, consider alternative approaches such as column-based storage.  

8. Recoverability

   Automatic back-ups must be provided for both the infrastructure and data.

9. Security and compliance

   You’ll be storing sensitive company data so your BI system must be highly secure by using; cloud services certified to ISO (and other) standards, penetration testing at regular intervals, encrypting data in transit and at rest and if required by providing a secure tunnel between your network and the platform.