Top Business Intelligence predictions for 2013 (Part One)

You didn’t think we’d forgotten, did you? Hardly. While industry insiders, commentators, pundits and interest groups vaunted their respective prophecies for Business Intelligence (BI) in 2013, we waited. Biding our time, anticipating the perfect moment to act – emulating our favorite fearless (and peerless) figures. Like Superman’s last-ditch lunge to salvage Lois Lane from the diabolical deeds of Lex Luthor; Robin Hood’s eleventh-hour heroics to hoodwink the rich and rescue Maid Marian; or James Bond’s nick-of-time negation of the nebulous Dr. No.

Our just-in-time predictions spawn from two overarching trends, which are set to encapsulate and define BI in 2013. This year, the major advancements of the BI industry will result from the maturation and convergence of the industry’s most prominent developments.

1. BI usage will explode

Over the past two years, BI has moved into the mainstream – people know what it is, they understand its potential benefits, and many have already acted. In 2013, ambition and investment will be realized via tangible BI deployments. A Computer Weekly poll on major enterprise IT investments for 2013 revealed that 78 percent of respondents had BI at the top of their priority list. And, once again, analytics and BI ranked as the number one tech priority in Gartner’s most recent annual CIO study.

Warning: Images may be prone to DRASTIC metaphorical exaggeration…

A joint TechRepublic – ZDNet analytics and Big Data study, conducted in November 2012 and comprising survey results from 1,300 of their worldwide readership, provided strong evidence of ballooning usage. A majority (51.7%) of respondents said they used data analytics to make business decision on a daily basis. A further 18.1 percent plan to deploy some form of business analytics implementation over the next 12 months meaning that, if these plans come to fruition, almost 70 percent of global businesses will have an analytics project in place by the conclusion of 2013.

Research from independent technology and market research firm, Pringle & Company, suggests a complimentary trend, estimating that the global market for BI software and associated services will roughly double over the next four years. The firm approximates that the global BI software and services market will rapidly expand from $79 billion in 2012, to $143 billion in 2016.

Pringle & Company’s Principal Analyst, Tom Pringle, said that the findings – based on The Business Intelligence Software & Services Market, 2011-2016 market study – were being driven by the proliferation of data, data types and the broad potential uses of BI.

“As data volume and variety grows ever bigger, the necessary investment in technology and services to understand and successfully exploit its value will have to rise. Such high levels reflect not only growing understanding of the real-world business value of data-driven insights, but also demonstrate the substantial range and depth of skills required to adopt the necessary systems to successfully discover and act on them.”

Forrester Research predicts that global enterprise IT spending will increase by 5.4 percent during 2013, with BI and analytics as a major stimulant. The firm estimates global BI investments to rise by 11 percent in 2013, and a further 16 percent from 2013 levels in 2014.

“CIOs can expect to see their competitors doing a lot more on mobility, collaboration and business intelligence,” said Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels, in an interview with CIO Journal. “If you’re not doing these three things, there is a severe risk you’re going to fall behind.”

2. BI adoption to (finally) surge in 2013

Low, and long vaunted, BI user adoption rates will also improve in 2013 – for two reasons. As continued investments in 2013 boost the prevalence of BI throughout organizations and most major industries, sustained user adoption will follow as many nah-sayers witness the benefits of day-to-day fact-based decision-making first hand. Secondly, contemporary BI vendors are harnessing, developing and delivering modern functionalities – capable of bridging the historical complexity of traditional BI tools – which truly cater for the demands of an increasingly non-technical audience. Just think intuitive drag-and-drag interfaces, ‘self-service’ data exploration, instinctive visualization, mobile delivery that supports device independence, and collaborative features that enable both accurate dissection of information, as well as faster, smarter action by supporting natural organizational decision-making processes.

Nucleus Research predicts that infamously low BI user adoption rates will double during 2013, with Nucleus Research Principal Analyst, Hyoun Park, stating that the firm estimates regular analytics use to rise to around 30 percent within most enterprises inside the next 12 months. Park stated that this rise would be driven by the realization that “nearly all business decisions can be data-based.”

“Nucleus expects BI adoption will double worldwide in 2013 as greater usability for non-expert analytics users, lower-cost options including cloud and SaaS, and further efforts by vendors to make BI accessible to every user, will drive broader adoption of BI,” said Park.

3. 2013 will NOT be the year Excel ‘kills’ BI

When will BI be killed by Excel? This – one would have to assume deliberatively inflammatory question – was posted about this time last year on the Business Intelligence Group LinkedIn group. Almost 1000 comments later, this frequently fiery thread reached its apparent conclusion just last week after a string of narcissistic, antagonist and straight-out insulting exchanges. So why was this conversation so hotly contested? Well, many contributors probably felt the need to justify the legitimacy of their career, organization and industry. Evidently others were provoked by the irrationality of the question. There are many good arguments that expound BI’s worth. Aside from the breadth, depth and fluidity of modern BI functionality far outstripping Excel in many ways, Aditya Satyadev – a self-described entrepreneur from India – probably summed the debate up best: “the basic constraint with excel is that it’s a desktop application. You can load as much data as you want, and conduct your analysis, but when it comes to sharing the analysis / information across the enterprise, it becomes a bottleneck. Also, with everyone trying to do their own analysis on Excel, consistency of view is compromised – multiple versions will inevitably float across the enterprise.”

Ultimately, if Excel adequately addressed present-day reporting requirements, the modern BI industry wouldn’t be flourishing.

Ventana Research’s benchmark report – Decision-Making and Performance: Improving Essential Business Analytics and Technologies – highlights both the reliance on, and trepidation associated with, Excel for reporting. The report, based on a survey of business analysts, found that 78 percent of respondents regarded spreadsheets as an “important” or “very important” component of enterprise reporting. Simultaneously however, a mere 29 percent said they would trust the information within a spreadsheet.

Another Ventana report – Requirements for 21st Century Spreadsheets: Uses and misuses of a critical business technology – exposed the roots of this common mistrust, with 50 percent of survey participants admitting to “frequently” finding “major errors” in spreadsheets used for reporting. Further, 42 percent said that they discovered out-of-date information “frequently” or “all the time”.

So perhaps the more appropriate question would be to ask ‘when will Excel be killed by BI?’ But, with an estimated 500 million active Excel users worldwide, the premise of that question won’t eventuate either – at least not this year, or anytime in the foreseeable future.

If anything, it’s more likely that Excel will succumb to internal forces – Microsoft deciding to update and repackage the value that Excel offers into a new product – than external.

4. Mobile BI is now a ‘must have’

Forget it. 2013 isn’t the year of the snake. It’s the year of Mobile BI. Or, more particularly, it’s the year Mobile BI will transition from a point of differentiation – embraced by leading BI deployments – to a ‘must have’ checklist item for organizations serious about their BI implementations.

Where to next?

Watch out, with heroic vigilance, for the next installment of our omnipotent take on 2013’s major BI developments and trends.