Why BI Doesn’t Work

Doug Henschen, the editor in chief at IntelligentEnterprise.com, recently posted the results of a BI survey asking 385 technology professionals about the barriers to their success with BI software. You can read about this in his September 2008 In Depth / State of BI article titled, “Business Intelligence Gets Smarter.”

Here are the rankings of BI barriers, from highest to lowest:

1. Complexity of BI tools and interfaces
2. Cost of BI software and per-us…

Doug Henschen, the editor in chief at IntelligentEnterprise.com, recently posted the results of a BI survey asking 385 technology professionals about the barriers to their success with BI software. You can read about this in his September 2008 In Depth / State of BI article titled, “Business Intelligence Gets Smarter.”

Here are the rankings of BI barriers, from highest to lowest:

1. Complexity of BI tools and interfaces
2. Cost of BI software and per-user licenses
3. Difficulty accessing relevant, timely, or reliable data
4. Insufficient IT staffing or excessive software requirements for IT support
5. Difficulty identifying applications or decisions that can be supported by BI
6. Lack of appropriate BI technical expertise within IT
7. Lack of support from executives or business management
8. Poor planning or management of BI programs
9. Lack of BI technology standards and best practices
10. Lack of training for end users

The IT individuals in the study place most of the blame on the BI vendors and then point to their organization’s data as the next big reason for problems. Their remaining 7 reasons are internal issues that prevent BI from being used successfully.

Their message is that the BI software itself is too hard to use and too expensive. Within the company, the IT group and the business users do not have the proper training nor are there adequate resources. To make matters worse, upper management either is not taking the BI initiatives seriously or they do not understand the amount of work involved.