Arcplan Presents Five Key Criteria for Evaluating Business Intelligence, Reporting and Analysis Software

Bangalore, March 11, 2015 (Newswire.com) - arcplan, the innovative business Intelligence (BI) specialist, presents five criteria to show how companies can select their BI solutions, reporting and analysis software based on their requirements. The criteria adopted by arcplan focuses on quantitative evaluation of the product quality in terms of flexibility, security, learnability, mobility and developmental capacity.

“When considering an optimal software solution it is worth looking at past and future development. They are good indicators of whether a solution is lagging behind or keeping up with the trends”, says Peter Kathmann, Senior Manager, Presales of arcplan. “Flexibility, security, learnability, mobility and developmental capacity are certainly not exhaustive criteria for evaluating BI, reporting and analysis software, but we believe that they are an excellent starting point for forward-looking software selection.”

1. Independence thanks to flexibility: Reporting and analysis software needs to cover both current and potential future requirements. Flexibility of BI solutions should enable users to prepare completely customized reports, easily integrate new data sources, prepare predictive analytics scenarios and offer write-back-capabilities.

2. Guarantee security: The issue of security focuses on two questions during an evaluation. First: are users outside the network securely supplied with reports? The second question relates to data security for the users. Can the software take over user- and roles-based security concepts from the data source? If the answers are yes, users are on the safe side.

3. Ensure learnability: The evaluation process must consider questions such as “Is comprehensive documentation provided for the software?”, “Do developers and user communities exist?” and “Are training courses offered?”

4. Mobility issues: Besides the basic display potential on a mobile device, an application should also adapt to the specific screen size and the alignment. Web developers refer to this as 'responsive design’. The same report should not have to be re-established for every terminal, for reasons of time and money.

5. Guarantee developmental capacity: BI trends develop quickly and dynamically. As a result, companies must be in a position to use their business solutions to respond to the changing market. When evaluating business solutions it is now more important than ever to pay attention to investment and future security.

About arcplan

arcplan is a leader in innovative Business Intelligence, Dashboard, Corporate Performance and Planning software solutions for desktop and mobile use. Since 1993, arcplan has enabled more than 3,200 customers worldwide to leverage their existing infrastructure for better decision making. arcplan has helped organizations leverage their Oracle  investment with robust BI and analytic solutions. Our flagship product arcplan Enterprise® was rated the #1 third party tool for Oracle Essbase (as well SAP BW and IBM Cognos TM1) in The BI Survey 14 (2014).