

About 84% of organizations are engaged with BI at some level: 16% are researching or piloting the technology, 27% are implementing BI for the first time, 8% have BI application in place with no further plans, and 33% are expanding their implementations.

And for next-stage projects, the business case may ultimately rely on the high cost of falling behind the competition.Īccording to our most recent survey of technology trends, BI applications are at a high level of adoption, as demonstrated by Figure 1. Most agree that having access to more timely and accurate data results in better decision-making and operational performance, but it is often impossible to prove with hard evidence. Soft returns are often more difficult to quantify. BI applications deliver hard ROI through reduction of time and resources spent on gathering and reporting financial and other information.

At the same time, open source solutions are emerging as a low-cost alternative to proprietary BI systems. Major vendors such as IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are bolstering their offerings, often by acquiring best-of-breed BI-focused vendors. The growth of this market has brought a wave of consolidation. In the typical organization, there are dozens of examples of how BI applications can support better decision-making by managers and frontline personnel. They can also be used to alert customer service representatives to up-sale opportunities. BI systems help top mangers identify spending trends, detect fraud, and lower the costs of marketing campaigns. In recent years, BI systems have moved from strategic applications to operational applications, sometimes extracting data directly from transactional systems such as ERP and CRM systems, and delivering operational metrics deeper into the organization.

They include tools for extracting data from various systems and tools for analyzing and reporting information. The applications often rely on data warehouses and data marts.
#Business intelligence applications examples full#
This Research Byte is a summary of our full report, Business Intelligence Adoption Trends and Economic Experiences.īusiness intelligence applications collect, analyze, evaluate, and report information that can be used to formulate business strategies and guide operational activities. While many companies are convinced that business intelligence applications are crucial for management effectiveness, IT managers are struggling to control the escalating costs of BI implementation and ongoing support. Yet as our data shows, obtaining a positive return on investment is not easy-or at least it is not easy to demonstrate-and budget overruns are more common for BI than for nearly any other technology in our study. As a result, even as businesses tighten down on new investments in response to current economic conditions, they continue to place a high priority on BI applications.Īccording to our recent survey of technology trends, nearly 60% of organizations are investing in BI initiatives this year. Business intelligence (BI) applications-which convert organizational data from myriad sources into meaningful information for management decision-making-promise to address this problem. Many business executives today complain that they are data-rich but information-poor. Business Intelligence: Bright Spot in IT Investment
