40-Point BI Evaluation Checklist
Score BI vendors on real query performance, business-user adoption, total cost, and integration depth. Surface the licensing tier traps and services overruns before you sign.
Scoring Framework
Rate each criterion 1 to 5 based on demonstrations and answers. Vendors that consistently score below the midpoint tend to underperform projections, usually because gaps in user experience, performance, or cost transparency compound across the first contract year.
Evaluation Criteria
User Experience and Adoption
30% weightEvaluates how quickly non-technical users can create useful reports. Test with actual business users during demos, not IT staff. Failed adoption is the most common cause of BI investments quietly underdelivering.
Sample Questions
- Can a sales manager create a territory performance dashboard in roughly 30 minutes?
- Do users need more than a couple of hours of training to build basic reports independently?
- Are dashboards readable and interactive on a phone screen?
- Can users modify existing reports without breaking functionality for everyone else?
- Do error messages help users fix problems, or just expose technical codes?
Performance and Scalability
25% weightTests against your actual data volumes and concurrent user loads. Vendors demo with small samples, but production reality involves much larger datasets and dozens of simultaneous users during month-end close.
Sample Questions
- What are response times under realistic concurrent user load on a production-scale dataset?
- How does performance degrade when connecting six to eight data sources simultaneously?
- What caching mechanisms prevent repeated execution of expensive queries?
- Can the system handle data refresh during business hours without impacting users?
- What happens to dashboard performance during peak usage periods like quarter-end?
Total Cost Transparency
20% weightSurfaces all costs including licenses, connectors, infrastructure, professional services, and ongoing maintenance. Software licenses typically represent only a portion of total three-year cost.
Sample Questions
- What's the complete three-year cost including infrastructure and services?
- Which features require premium licensing, and what share of users tend to need upgrades?
- Are data connectors separately licensed, and what do they cost?
- What professional services are required versus optional for basic functionality?
- What are typical expansion costs when adding users or new data sources?
Data Integration Capabilities
15% weightEvaluates connections to your specific systems like Salesforce, NetSuite, and custom databases. Tests refresh reliability and data modeling complexity against your actual schema, not idealized samples.
Sample Questions
- How many hours to model our Salesforce and NetSuite data for self-service use?
- What's the data refresh failure rate and recovery process?
- Can the system handle incremental updates on large datasets?
- How complex is row-level security setup for our organizational structure?
- What happens when source system schemas change during product updates?
Vendor Stability and Support
10% weightAssesses vendor financial health, product roadmap, and actual support quality. Check references from customers 18 months or more post-implementation for a realistic support experience beyond the honeymoon period.
Sample Questions
- What's the median resolution time for performance issues affecting multiple users?
- Can you provide references from customers 18 months or more post-implementation?
- What's your track record of product updates breaking existing functionality?
- How do you handle support escalation for business-critical issues?
- What data export capabilities exist if we need to migrate to a different vendor?
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