Corporate executives and IT managers are becoming increasingly annoyed at the complexity of business intelligence (BI) software which should streamline their business decision-making processes, a new survey sponsored by Unisys has found.
Despite industry concerns about the viability of delivering BI across the enterprise, 80% of respondents agree that non-IT staff should be able to easily and effectively use BI applications.
"More than 30% of respondents reported running 11 or more separate BI applications, with most companies running at least seven," says Bernard Donnelly, consulting services manager at Unisys Africa.
The survey shows these professionals are exploring server infrastructure standardisation to address the overwhelming number of individual BI applications operating across their organisations.
BI - services and software designed to help companies analyse customer, market and operational data and transform it into information to enhance sales and performance - comprises a market valued at $25 billion worldwide, according to major industry analysts.
Market growth and sporadic advances in its software development have forced companies to add BI applications individually. The result is a collection of disparate applications lacking one standard reporting capability, which creates potential inefficiencies. The Unisys survey shows that 92% of IT decision-makers are ready to standardise these applications for more efficient reporting.
"A significant number of people in the survey said they are using BI software to improve their own business processes, yet these very applications may be contributing to the confusion. After all, the end-game in BI is the ability to make better, faster decisions, and the way to accomplish this is through standard, easy-to-use reporting capabilities accessible to employees throughout the business," says Donnelly.
The survey, conducted by market research firm KRC Research, queried C-level executives and IT managers about their organisations` BI strategies. Respondents work for large companies in the US with a minimum of $500 million in annual revenue. The full survey results can be viewed at http://www.unisys.com/es7/BI/survey.asp.
Share
Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. Our people combine expertise in consulting, systems integration, outsourcing, infrastructure and server technology with precision thinking and relentless execution to help clients, in more than 100 countries, quickly and efficiently achieve competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.unisys.co.za.
Editorial contacts