Checklist: 12 questions to ask before choosing a BI platform

Choosing a BI platform is a 5-10 year decision. Yet it is often made based on a vendor demo or on what the competition uses. This checklist grew out of the questions we ask in our kick-off workshops - and the ones you should be able to answer before you sign for licences.

Go through it with your team. If you cannot answer three or more questions, it is not yet time to pick a tool - it is time to tidy up the brief.

A. Business and goals

1. Which three decisions do we want to make faster or better?

Not “we want dashboards”. Specifically: “We want to know margin per customer by the 2nd working day of the month.” If you cannot name the goals, no tool will deliver them.

2. Who will actually look at the reports, and how often?

Five managers once a week is a different case from 80 salespeople daily on mobile. The first works with anything; the second needs licences, performance and mobile design - and that fundamentally changes the price.

3. How many “versions of the truth” do we have today?

If the CFO has a different revenue figure from the sales director, a BI tool will not fix it - it will just display it more nicely. You first need shared metric definitions and a data model.

B. Data and architecture

4. Where does the data come from and how clean is it?

List the sources: ERP, CRM, e-shop, accounting, Excel. For each, answer: does it have an API or a database? Are there duplicate customers? Who “owns” it? More in How to connect business systems.

5. Do we need a data warehouse, or is a direct connection enough?

With one source and a handful of reports, a directly connected tool is enough. With 3+ sources and history you want to compare year on year, a data warehouse is a must - and the BI tool is just the layer on top. See Data warehouse or Excel?.

6. Cloud, on-premise or hybrid?

The answer is driven by regulation (healthcare, finance), existing infrastructure and who will operate the system. Microsoft Fabric and Power BI are cloud-first; SQL Server + Power BI Report Server can run in your own server room.

7. What ecosystem “gravity” do we already have?

If the company lives in Microsoft 365, Power BI has a huge integration advantage (Teams, Excel, SharePoint, Entra ID). If you are on Google Workspace or AWS, calculate whether going against the current is worth it. More in Microsoft Fabric: is it worth switching to?.

C. People and operations

8. Who will build the reports and who will maintain them?

Self-service BI is a great slogan, but someone has to manage the data model, access and performance. Do you have an internal person, or do you need a partner for operations? The answer changes the choice (ease of administration vs. flexibility).

9. What is the learning curve for our users?

Managers need to open a report on their phone and see a number. Analysts want to write DAX or SQL. Both types of users should see the tool before the decision, not after.

10. How will we handle access and security?

Row-level security (a salesperson sees only their region), GDPR for personal data, an audit of who saw what. If the tool cannot do this natively, you pay for it in development.

D. Cost and risk

11. What will it cost over 3 years - in total?

Licences are often the smallest item. Add: implementation, the data warehouse, cloud consumption, training and ongoing development. Ballpark figures are in How much does a data warehouse or BI project cost and the return in Is investing in data worth it?.

12. What happens when we want to leave?

Vendor lock-in is real. Are your data and data model in an open format (SQL, Parquet, dbt), or do they live only inside the tool? Good architecture keeps the BI layer replaceable - the data warehouse stays, the tool can change.

How to use the checklist

Print it or copy it into a shared document.
Have business (CFO, sales) and IT fill it in independently.
Compare the answers - the differences are exactly where the project will later get stuck.
Only then invite vendors for a demo - and give them your questions, not their script.

Want to go through the checklist with someone who has done it fifty times? We offer an independent audit and BI platform selection - with no licence sales. Or get in touch and we will walk through your answers on a 30-minute call.