BI Offers Promise Of Widespread Benefits, Yet Many Challenges Remain

Ness Technologies, a global provider of information technology solutions and services, has announced the results of a study on the state of enterprise business intelligence (BI). Titled ‘The Ness Technologies Market Pulse Study’, the research shows that although companies are expecting significant benefits from their BI initiatives – such as improved transparency into corporate data for business planning and decision-making – actual results are lagging expected outcomes.

According to the study, BI initiatives have encountered a number of challenges and as a result, investments in BI programs have not yielded the expected returns. Such issues as lack of alignment with company strategy, resistance to change, inaccessible data, and challenges in enterprise data integration have contributed to this underperformance.

“Business Intelligence strategies, solutions, and technologies are top of mind for many of our clients in 2010,” said Larry Scott, President, Ness Global Industries. “However, as the returns on earlier investments in BI have underperformed expectations, organisations are determining the best next steps to maximise BI benefits.”

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The Ness Technologies Market Pulse Study of top level business and IT executives at companies with over $500 million in revenues was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2009. Among the major findings are:

* BI initiatives are being driven by the ability to have better transparency into company data for business planning and decision-making (54 percent), a desire for more insight into the business to keep up with rapid change (43 percent), and real-time analysis capabilities (43 percent).

* Although companies feel they have adequate access to planning data (73 percent) and financial data (61 percent), they are less comfortable about their access to customer data (53 percent) and market trend data (52 percent).

* The top four BI pain points are all centered on data: data silos (47 percent), data integration (35 percent), mapping data (31 percent), and data cleansing/ modeling (31 percent).

* More than half of respondents report that results achieved are lagging expected outcomes in 14 of 16 potential outcome categories. The largest gaps are in business agility, data integration, and new revenue opportunities.

What contributes to BI success?

The survey uncovered actions companies can take to increase the effectiveness of their BI programs. Alignment with business strategy and good organisational communications are strong indicators of success for BI initiatives.

“Although the benefits of BI have been elusive to many organisations, there are steps that can be taken to move the needle on your BI program from expected to achieved outcomes,” continued Scott. “Managing data integration more effectively and ensuring alignment across the company or business unit can bring companies both operational and competitive advantage.”