Top 10 Questions to Ask a Potential BI Partner

In the last few weeks I've gotten some great questions from senior living teams exploring business intelligence & data analytics. Today I'm sharing 10 great questions to ask a potential business intelligence solution partner. Investing in a business intelligence solution is a commitment, and we hope that these questions will help you pick the best partner and be set up for long-term success.

Getting started

1. Have you previously integrated with the systems that I use? Are these integrations via API, SFTP, or another method?

2. Do you need any assistance / time from my team to set up these integrations?

3. Approximately how long does it take to complete each integration? Can you foresee any reasons why an integration might take longer?

Mapping your business and your data

4. We have unique business processes (i.e. calculating occupancy differently for AL vs. MC) that make it complicated to track KPIs. How would you handle this?

5. What if our source data changes (i.e. adding a new community or position in our payroll system) - who is responsible for updating the mappings?Data quality

6. Is there a process for confirming that data from the BI system matches the source systems or "ties-out"? How detailed is it? Can we review it together?

7. How often is that process run to confirm that the BI system and the source system stay in-sync?8. How often is data refreshed from the source system? How do you handle systems that refresh on different cadences (i.e. bi-weekly payroll vs. nightly financial data)

Long-term success & partnership

9. What happens if we change one of our source systems? Can you carry over historical data from the old system?

10. If we stop working together, what happens with our data?