The biggest barrier to business intelligence (BI) adoption in SA is cost, with 26.58% of respondents in the ITWeb ASG BI Survey 2011 citing this as a major challenge.
Carina Shaw, CEO of ASG Performance Solutions, says that while BI does not come cheap, it's more important for organisations to get value for money from their BI solutions. “The right BI solution that meets requirements can enable big savings to organisations, both from a manual reporting and business insight perspective.”
Other BI barriers identified by respondents include data irregularities, caused by data not being capturing correctly (22.78%), and hard-to-determine ROI and compatibility (11.39%).
The biggest motivating factor for implementing BI technologies was to speed up decision-making processes (44.3%), followed by improved efficiency (24%), according to the survey.
What stood out the most from the survey results, says Shaw, was that over 30% of respondents indicate that 50% or more of their organisations' reports are produced manually outside of their BI solution. “This means that a fair amount of manual work is required to meet reporting requirements and that there is room for improvement when it comes to BI solutions meeting reporting requirements.
“Given the complexities specific to ever-changing reporting needs and management of multiple data sources, I do not think this is surprising. However, it is reinforcing the need for agile BI solutions, both from a product and relationship perspective,” explains Shaw.
The survey found that 46% of respondents have an enterprise-wide data management strategy, while 35% don't. Shaw points out that an enterprise data management strategy is particularly relevant in emerging markets where organisations are focusing on growing and evolving over time.
“An enterprise data management strategy should guide organisations through the different stages of maturity - linking processes with systems and people behaviour. It should also govern the data formats, sources and requirements across the organisation with the end in mind, ie. what is the absolute minimum reporting requirements.”
For the full results of the ITWeb ASG BI Survey 2011, click here.
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