In my last post, I put to rest some myths about BI software customization. Today I'd like to continue rooting for configurable business intelligence by explaining the benefits you can look forward to with a custom solution.
1) You'll get a BI solution that fits your needs , without compromise.
The most successful BI solution is one that fits your business requirements like a glove. Since each organization has unique business processes, these requirements will differ from one organization to the next. With a custom BI solution, finance teams for instance can take advantage of a personalized planning tool that reflects their existing process. Some of the planning vendors arcplan encounters offer an out-of-the-box solution that forces customers to mold to a specific process, instead of the other way around. This lengthens the adoption process, causes disruptive process changes, and adds training costs. When your BI software forces you to compromise on features, you won't end up with an ideal end result. With a custom solution, you can get all of the unique features your organization needs – and as I said previously, it doesn't need to take years and or demolish your budget.
2) You'll enjoy a steep learning curve.
In your fast-paced business environment, you need to spend time doing the work that brings in revenue and less time learning complicated technology. A custom BI solution can be tailored to how your team currently works, and a product like arcplan can ease the transition by enabling users to work in their most familiar interface – Excel. Because our solutions are customized, you might choose an Excel-like web interface, or want to work directly in Excel while having access to live data, which is something a lot of our customers like. This kind of solution helps users learn the technology very quickly and seamlessly transition to their new BI solution.
3) Configuration and project rollout can be done in phases.
With a custom solution, you choose how the implementation goes – all at once or in phases. There are many advantages of incremental rollout of BI technology. To name a few, incremental deployments mean that less people need to be in coordination at any given time in order to achieve a project goal. Phased deployments are less disruptive to your team and its existing process. Incremental roll-out also means that wins are communicated more often, so the team has a record of their successes along the way.
4) Believe it or not, configurable solutions are often more affordable than purchasing off the shelf.
With a configurable solution you can select as few or as many features as you need for your business to be successful in its analysis efforts. Furthermore, custom BI solution providers can be flexible with pricing. With an out-of-the-box solution, the sticker price is what you will pay. Yes, with a custom solution you do pay professional services/implementation fees, but a good vendor doesn't want to drag the implementation out to make a few bucks. arcplan's ability to deploy enterprise projects in 4 months – for which we were named #1 for Project Length among Enterprise Reporting and Large Enterprise Project vendors in the 2012 international BI Survey – is a testament to that fact. Think about how quickly we deploy smaller departmental solutions!
5) You will have your own secret sauce to success.
Your custom BI solution will be uniquely yours. Ask any of our Solutions Architects at arcplan, and they'll tell you that no two arcplan solutions are the same. Ask our customers their secret to success and they'll remain tight-lipped about what they’re doing behind the scenes to be insanely efficient, profitable and stay ahead of the competition. So unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to share all the cool and unique possibilities with arcplan's custom BI solutions, but you really can't get this stuff off a shelf.
