In the past years I’ve had the opportunity to work on both sides of the BI vendor table, as both the consumer and the retailer. I’ve seen many projects succeed, some projects fail, and some projects that seem to surpass all expectations and all parties involved are delighted. The latter group of success stories all have one common factor: TEAMWORK

These successful BI implementations often end with kindred feelings of friendship and it all starts with the attitudes of the two parties involved. When you approach your BI vendor as a team mate it is easier to see that you both have the same goal: a smooth, successful BI implementation.

This means that both sides will need to do their due diligence. Roles are not always clearly defined and a team work attitude will encourage flexibility. Your BI vendor will not always be an expert on the content of your data, so be prepared to source internally for validation stages.

Consider the two options for communicating with your BI vendor below:

Teammate Attitude: Our data doesn’t look correct, let’s investigate to see where the problem might be.
Authoritative attitude: Your data is wrong, you need to fix it so that we can go live, this project is already behind.

The teammate attitude opens up the opportunity for further conversation. As a BI vendor I will be able to request specific examples of inaccuracies and I will feel comfortable asking for help if the data appears to be non-standard.

The authoritative attitude shuts down any potential for creative problem solving right away. The assumption behind this statement is that the BI vendor did something wrong and is aware of how to fix it. What super-techie, number-crunching, data-loving nerd would knowingly choose to display inaccurate data? Ahhh! Sounds like a nightmare for any data guru.

Remember, when you’re shopping for your BI vendor, you are shopping for a partnership, not a dine and dash vendor. The earlier you help cultivate that partnership, the smoother your BI implementation will go (assuming you pick an awesome vendor to work with).