Self-Service Business Intelligence Users Are Now In The Majority

One of many findings from The BI Survey 14 - BARC’s annual survey of over 3,000 business intelligence professionals - published today

Figure 1: Adoption levels of BI trends (n=2303). (Graphic: Business Wire)

Figure 1: Adoption levels of BI trends (n=2303). (Graphic: Business Wire)

LONDON--()--BARC:

55% of business intelligence (BI) users now claim to be engaging in self-service tasks, with another 24% planning to do so in the future.

“Of all the trending topics analyzed in The BI Survey 14, self-service BI is the most popular, along with operational analytics,” said Carsten Bange, CEO of BARC and co-author of The BI Survey 14. “Adoption of self-service BI is way ahead of other current trends such as collaborative BI (29%) and mobile BI (18%), both of which have received comparable levels of media attention and vendor promotion in recent times. We’re seeing a growing trend among enterprises to enable end-users to build or design their own dashboards and reports without the need for IT support. End-users may even build their own BI applications that combine multiple data sources through highly configurable portals.”

For the third year running, growth in the use of mobile BI has slowed, increasing just 2% on last year to 18%. The number of enterprises planning to deploy mobile BI in the next 12 months has also decreased for the second consecutive year.

“Despite continued hype in this area, we still see relatively few organizations using mobile BI,” said Bange. “Concern over data security is an important factor here, as well as the extra investment required to enable mobile access to corporate data. However, while the situation is improving, there’s still a lack of convincing mobile BI options on the market.”

The BI Survey 14 also reveals that 30% of BI users now consider themselves as ‘power users’.

“In the past we’ve used the 80/20 rule to describe the ratio between casual and power users, but it’s now clear the percentage of power users is much higher than anticipated,” said Wayne Eckerson, co-author of The BI Survey 14. “The preeminence of big data, analytics and data science in media coverage and product announcements reflect this finding.”

The BI Survey 14 is based on user opinion from 3,224 BI professionals worldwide about software selection, implementation and usage. Detailed feedback on a record 34 BI products from 29 vendors is analyzed and compared, including international giants IBM, Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and SAP, as well as BI specialists such as Qlik, SAS Institute, MicroStrategy (MSTR), Tableau (DATA) and Tibco (TIBX).

About BARC

BARC is an enterprise software industry analyst delivering product evaluations, conferences, market research and consulting to over 1,000 customers each year. BARC specializes in advising organizations on software selection in its core research areas of business intelligence, data management and enterprise content management.

Along with CXP and Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), BARC forms part of the CXP Group - the leading European IT research and consulting firm with 140 staff in eight countries.

Contacts

BARC – Business Application Research Center
Mark Handford, + 44 (0)1536 772 451
mhandford@barc-research.com
www.barc-research.com/BI-Survey

Release Summary

Self-service business intelligence users are now in the majority according to The BI Survey 14 - BARC’s annual survey of over 3,000 business intelligence professionals - published today.

Contacts

BARC – Business Application Research Center
Mark Handford, + 44 (0)1536 772 451
mhandford@barc-research.com
www.barc-research.com/BI-Survey