The justification for running multiple mobile analytics tools

EBay uses a host of mobile analytics tools, from SAP Business Objects to Tableau. When it comes to mobile analytics tools, what do eBay's end users care about, and why does eBay run multiple mobile analytics tools?

Amit Bhatnagar, BI manager, eBay: They care more about the usability aspect of the mobile analytics and how easy it is to use and consume and interact with. From their point of view, from the feedback I've received, they don't care about the technology behind it. They are just interested in how easy it is for them to use.

No one tool can satisfy everyone's reporting requirements. If someone wants to have a dashboard interaction with the data, one tool would be best. If they want to do interactive reporting, another tool might be best. So we are giving them exposure to whatever works best for them from a usability point of view.

If you tell them to take a tool and use it to serve all their needs, when they start to use that technology, they are not happy. One technology doesn't serve everyone's needs, so that is why we're going with a multiple tool technology. The users are liking it, and we have (ZEDventures') Reporting Catalog to help us achieve a single entry point to access all those reports.

Also, all these tools only work with certain kinds of data sources in the best possible way. No one tool can pull everything from all data sources. Especially these days when users are so demanding in how they want to see and access the data, you really cannot have one or two tools to satisfy all of their requirements.

As told to Mark Fontecchio, news director.Mark Fontecchio may be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @markfontecchio.