Business Intelligence in the Organization

This chapter provides the results of a survey conducted by BetterManagement in 2005 entitled “How Do You Plan for Business Intelligence?”. The specific objectives of the research were to determine how Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICC) were developed and deployed within the organization. The participants in the study came from a variety of industries. The service industry had the highest representation with 18%, followed by information technology at 16%, banking and financial services at 10%, and manufacturing at 9%. Healthcare and government organizations accounted for 6% each and pharma accounted for 5%. The remaining industries accounted for less than 5% each. The survey shows that Business Intelligence (BI) usage still seems to be restricted to management level in most companies. Additionally, the survey results show that a majority of individuals are not satisfied with the results they are currently getting out of BI. It seems that the users still lack trust in the quality of information and need easy‐to‐use interfaces and support with interpreting information. These results indicate that there is room for BI to improve in both quantity and quality. Just over 20% of the respondents indicate that they have put a BICC in place and another 30% are thinking about implementing one. A large number of those organizations that have a BICC report that they see an increase in BI usage, higher business‐user satisfaction, and increased decision‐making speed. This perception could indicate that organizations that have BICCs are successful in getting more value out of their BI investment, which in turn means that they are able to address the main reason for establishing BICCs, to drive the use of BI to different levels of the organization.