South African companies believe in the value business intelligence (BI) solutions offer, according to the latest SA BI survey results. Released recently, the ITWeb 2003 BI Survey clearly demonstrated that there is considerable room for growth in this sector of the IT industry.
"Although most BI implementations are less than two years old, 60% of respondents agreed that their BI implementation has already achieved return on investment," says ITWeb editor in chief Ranka Jovanovic.
She notes that 50% of survey respondents have mature BI implementations, while just 2% claim zero adoption. This indicates that 48% of the companies surveyed are either evaluating a BI strategy, or are at some stage of implementation.
According to Craig Rodger, manager: products strategy and marketing at SAS Institute SA, there is a definite acceleration of BI projects locally as more South African companies embrace the value of effective business analytics.
"BI is the only IT sector to grow consistently at 10% to 12% per annum, in spite of the general IT market slump of the last three years. Now this sector is showing increased growth of 15%. This is remarkable because this growth is being experienced in a relatively mature market," he says.
Rodger attributes the steady and accelerating growth to a simple reason: demonstrable value. "BI is traditionally very cheap in terms of what can be achieved with it. However, because in the past BI spend was easily justified, situations have arisen where there are many pockets of disparate BI tools throughout organisations, presenting the familiar integration nightmare," he says.
Key drivers for companies that are using BI solutions include improving business performance management (39%), consolidating information (24%) and understanding the business better (18%).
The survey revealed that the biggest users of BI in this country are the financial services, transport and insurance industries. However, Jovanovic believes the survey identifies a worrying issue: there is no clear understanding of who within an organisation drives BI or is responsible for the BI project.
"42% of respondents are unsure of where ownership of BI initiatives lies," says Jovanovic. "There appears to be confusion as to who within an organisation drives BI, and which departments utilise it."
As to who makes the decision to purchase a BI solution, respondents indicated in equal numbers that responsibility lay with either the CEO, MD, board of directors or business owner, while just 3% of BI purchasing decisions had been made by the financial director. This, says Rodger, highlights the importance attached to the benefits of business intelligence within organisations, making it a business rather than a technology decision.
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