BI Professionals Indicate Preference for Corporate-Wide Adoption of BI but Steep Price Tags Limit Universal Adoption

by Rachel Shortt
LogiXML BIz Comm Editorial Staff
July 11, 2007

A survey (available for download below), conducted by TekSouth and LogiXML, of business intelligence (BI) professionals worldwide reveals that while they overwhelmingly believe that their companies can benefit from the insights BI provides, the perceived high costs of implementing a BI system have prevented more than two-thirds of them from doing so throughout their firms.

Nearly 60 percent of respondents agree that knowledge workers throughout organizations should have access to Business Intelligence capabilities.

A majority of survey respondents believe that corporate-wide implementation of BI systems supports the opportunity for greater insight and wider access. They said it delivers increased value over department-level BI, even though the latter may cost less and provide a more targeted focus to specific information.

Key findings from the survey include:

• 89 percent favor a “BI on-demand” approach, where workers can ask the questions they want instead of relying on pre-formed queries

• 58 percent feel that any knowledge worker should have access to business intelligence tools

• 43 percent perceive the cost of implementing corporate-wide BI as “prohibitive"

• 30 percent want a BI solution, but are waiting for costs to drop before implementing one.

• Fewer than 40 percent have BI deployed. More than 37 percent of respondents said they either have company-wide BI functionality deployed, or will have it deployed within a year. An additional 39 percent said it is on the drawing board, with no firm timetable scheduled;

• 63 percent say BI is underappreciated. While business intelligence professionals may understand its advantages, they may not be successfully communicating its benefits within their companies.

• More than 63 percent said some people at their firms do not understand or appreciate BI's value.

Download your copy of the complete survey results here.

This survey was conducted last month on behalf of Teksouth Corporation, a veteran provider of data management and analysis systems, and LogiXML. More than 250 responses were received from around the world from companies ranging from Global 100 to mid-sized enterprises.