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Industry-analyst product reviews can be a good source of introductory research, but these reviews can be fruitless endeavors. Often, the result is purchasing a software product that owns the most bells and whistles but really doesn't fill the need. A more successful process in evaluating and selecting the right BI analytics tool involves gathering and prioritizing BI requirements as well as utilizing business use cases to settle on the right tool category and style.

In this way, your organization can select the BI analytics tool that best matches the use cases, meets a budget and can be seamlessly implemented and integrated into the technology landscape. An important step in the evaluation process is to classify which of the product's features and functions are must-haves, nice-to-haves and will-not-use. Typical must-have features include access to various databases and file types, filtering data, drilling down from summarized to more detailed data, a Web-based client-user interface, independent and interconnected mash-ups, print and export, visualizations and security.