Where Business Intelligence Plans Match Reality

Mobile business intelligence use may triple within the year, as the implementation area is the likely leader of hot enterprise software trends, according to a new extensive survey.


Mobile business intelligence use may triple within the year, as the implementation area is the likely leader of hot enterprise software trends, according to a new extensive survey.

The BI Survey 12, formerly The OLAP Survey, covers responses from more than 2,600 end users, consultants and vendor employees, across both IT and lines of business. The survey is conducted by the Business Application Research Center (BARC).

In terms of “trending” BI implementation areas, there is a huge push on a few fronts planned over the next 12 months. Forty percent of respondents noted that they have data discovery or visualization programs in place, with another 21 percent reporting plans for new investment on those fronts within the year. Approximately one-third of respondents have collaboration programs in place, but up to 57 percent plan to have new collaboration plans in the works by the end of 2013.

Mobile BI is established at 13 percent of organizations surveyed, though that could more than triple in the next 12 months. While cautioning that these estimates don’t always come to fruition on the timeline IT and business leaders plan, BARC wrote that if this mobile push rings true, it will boost BI use on devices by 45 percent in a year, “making it the hottest trend in BI.” It’s also worth noting that even with the enthusiasm over mobile BI and collaboration, neither of the initiatives cracked the top reasons respondents gave as to the driving factors on their BI programs and purchases. However, BARC anticipates mobile BI interest to match reality in the coming year, based on the integration moves by vendors, the technical capabilities already seen in deployments and the quality of the mobile end user experience.

On the far lower end of the spectrum, only 14 percent of respondents are looking to the cloud for business intelligence over the next 12 months, and just 5 percent currently have anything in place. BARC recognized that it received far greater interest in cloud BI in a separate survey earlier this year that heard primarily from IT managers. Comparing those two surveys, the Germany-based research firm concluded that “end users don’t really care how BI software is deployed.”

To access the 96-page survey results, including extensive vendor rankings and interest levels, visit the survey's website.

This story first appeared on Information Management, a sister publication to Health Data Management.

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