Survey Shows European Decision Makers in Need of Better BI

Information Builders, the software vendor of the enterprise Business Intelligence product WebFOCUS, partnered with market research company Vanson Bourne for insight into how European companies made decisions and to evaluate the impact of those decisions upon business.

In this “No Barrier to Good Decisions” study, Vanson Bourne surveyed over 600 professionals in eight different countries across Europe. Almost all of the respondents (86%) felt that their companies could be making better decisions; 72% felt that a key to achieving faster decisions would be to have better access to information.

However, over half said it was not about more data, but rather easier access to the information already in the enterprise. Forty percent of the respondents wanted simpler BI tools and applications.

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The study found that European managers spend over one hour each day looking for information. When viewed financially, this unproductive time costs European organizations with over 1000 employees about 8 million euros annually. The study found that marketing professionals spend even more time than managers looking for data–83 minutes per day (versus 67 for the managers).

Almost all of the people surveyed (88%) feel their organization does not give them the proper tools to do their jobs. 68% believe their company does not provide them with properly formatted information suitable for easy use.

The bottom line? Almost nobody in the survey felt they were capable of making good decisions based on the tools and data provided by their organizations.

Information Builders’ Chief Marketing Office Michael Corcoran commented:

“If companies want to increase their competitiveness, they need to improve access to data across all levels of the company. They risk hampering any competitive advantage if they limit the availability of data for business decisions to desktop or laptop users and overlook other mobile devices. In addition, they have to be realistic about the level of control they will have over the devices the data is being accessed on.

At the heart of supporting this goal is the need to create the right infrastructure and support to enable broader access to data over an ever-increasing number of devices, either in real time or using a local device cache.”

Good Business Intelligence goes back to the simple formula of providing the right information at the right time to the right person so he or she can make the right decision and take the right action. Of course, this survey shows that executing a BI initiative effectively is the difficult part.

For more information, see the press release.