I spoke to an executive who downloaded our free desktop BI software the other day. He mentioned that he downloaded the software because he was interviewing for a job with a company that used our BI and he wanted to find out about:
- the volume of data that could be analyzed
- how easy it would be for him to develop his own dashboards, charts, graphs, and pivot tables
- the drill down and ad-hoc capabilities
- costs and time associated with training power users and other end-users
He also asked about cases where our BI was able to succeed at other companies in improving company performance or reducing costs to increase cash flow. Lastly, he asked questions about using our BI to make strong presentations to other executives.
I thought about how this candidate is going to create a more favorable impression for his interviewer than others who didn't know as much about the BI that they would be using.
I also thought that if I were an interviewer, it would be insightful to ask interviewees what BI they used, and the type of queries and information they were accustomed to conducting and accessing in order to increase or decrease key metrics.
Ultimately, perhaps the most important question is whether candidates could accurately state the total benefit received, the total cost of ownership and ultimately the ROI's associated with their BI projects and implementations. Answers to these questions could quickly reveal a glimpse of the performance capabilities of each prospect. Are they the type of executive who continuously seeks to improve their insight and use of technology, or have they reached a status quo?