publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/395170
CRM system. Some firms are satisfied with having a BI solution that only supports the PMS data set, while for others a key deliverable of the BI project is the ability to merge and report on disparate data sets. ILTA WHITE PAPER: OCTOBER 2014 WWW.ILTANET.ORG 53 A BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE BILL OF RIGHTS: 20 CRITICAL FACTORS FOR SELECTING YOUR BI SOLUTION TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR VENDORS: • What are the extensibility capabilities of your system? • What percentage of your clientele brings in external data? • How long does it typically take to complete a new data integration? • Here are the details on the external data our firm needs to bring into the BI solution. Can we add this as a contract addendum? TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR VENDORS: • What security roles are supported? • How is security enforced so that a user can only see his slice of the data? • How is the content security implemented so that a user can only access his correct roles? • Here are my firm's specific security requirements. Can they be supported? TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR VENDORS: • What are my options for data refresh? • What is the lowest achievable latency? • How can I be assured that my practice management system will not be impacted by refresh processing during the day? TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR VENDORS: • Here is a detailed document of my profitability allocation and analysis requirements. Can we include this in the contract? • Our firm has a particular allocation method. Can you show it working on either my data or your demo data? • If we make a small change in a profitability allocation definition, how long is the turnaround to see that live in the cube? • What is the average query time for a "tough slice," such as showing revenue for all participating attorneys by client over a full fiscal year? 12. Low Data Latency: Data latency defines how "fresh" the data are. If a user connects to the dashboards at 2:00 p.m. and can see his transactions from 1:00 p.m. on the same day, that is a one-hour data latency. You want latency to be as low as possible, and any refreshes made during business hours should not impact the performance of your practice management system. 13. Robust Security: Grill the vendor on this subject, and possibly engage personnel from your IT department to confirm the technical aspects of the security solution. 15. Access to the Full Data Set: One of the great joys of a BI solution is to be able to drill down to details. And one of the great sorrows of a BI solution is when the user wants to drill down to details, only to find those details are not available in their data warehouse or cube. The topic here is granularity, and most BI solutions are trying to strike a balance between granularity and performance. If the entire data set is available, the cube or data warehouse might be too large to documentation of your profitability requirements. Provide the vendor with the document, and insist that it will be an addendum to the contract. 14. An Extensible Solution: Extensibility is the ability to "extend" your BI solution by bringing in additional data sources. Examples might be FTEs from a spreadsheet, target values from a custom table or a complete integration with a payroll or