Consumerization of Business Intelligence to deliver greater ROI

Posted by: Yellowfin Team

The consumerization of Business Intelligence (BI), and the resultant increase in user-adoption, is set to deliver organizations better BI Return on Investment (ROI) according to research firm Gartner.

Business Intelligence user-adoption remains poor, ROI inhibited

Gartner said that less than 30 percent of potential BI users within most organizations currently used the technology. The technology analyst suggested low user-adoption rates are primarily due to traditional BI tools and approaches that are difficult to use and slow to respond. Gartner said that the consumerization of BI had resulted in a new bread of end-user focused BI solutions, capable of delivering faster, more relevant results to business people of all backgrounds, and a better ROI.

"The fact of the matter is that BI is not pervasive and adoption is not in line with the investment made by most firms,” said James Richardson, research director at Gartner. “Almost every organization could improve, if its stakeholders had easier access to well-integrated information, and if they analyzed that information to manage performance and make decisions.

"The consumerization of BI technology offers a means for it to break out and reach many more users, by offering faster, more user-friendly and more relevant BI,” said Richardson.

Social, search and Web 2.0 drive consumerization of Business Intelligence

Gartner analysts said that new social, search and Web 2.0 technologies have altered user expectations surrounding enterprise reporting and analytics. People now expect intuitiveness and interactivity from new technology and software. The days of laboring through instruction manuals are over.


Three factors for achieving sustained Business Intelligence user-adoption

Gartner listed the three key BI product-oriented factors for sustained user adoption as:

  • Ease of use: If BI is difficult to learn, use, maintain or simply looks unappealing, significant user drop-off will result
  • Performance: If query response times are slow, report production/building arduous, end-users will stop using the BI tool
  • Relevance: If the BI platform does not present relevant information to the right users, in an easily understandable and consumable format, then frustration and abandonment will occur

“A failure in any one of these areas can be the cause of poor take-up, and goes some way toward explaining why just 28 percent of users have adopted the organization’s standard BI platform of choice," said Richardson.

“Ensuring a better match to end-user needs [will enable] a greater Return on Investment in BI.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report – The Consumerization of BI Drives Greater Adoption. The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1712414.

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