Ease of Use and Interface Appeal in Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence tools play a mission-critical role in identifying new business opportunities and helping knowledge workers make better decisions. But the widespread adoption of BI tools has been hindered by their reputation as being hard to use. Cindi Howson researches the impact of an appealing user interface and ease of use in this report.

This paper discusses:

• what makes BI easy and appealing
• BI adoption and ease of use
• innovations that improve ease of use and interface appeal
• a case study with Tableau customer Barnes-Jewish Hospital

In this research report Cindi explains the impact of the user interface as a first impression, and emphasizes the importance of ease of use in business intelligence tools. She creates a framework outlining considerations to keep in mind to enable broader adoption of BI tools and discusses how innovative approaches include integration with Excel, animation and search.