03.12.2009

Clear criticism of software manufacturers by BI users

Only slightly more than every second company with Business Intelligence (BI) solutions in use is satisfied with the products of the software manufacturers. According to a survey conducted by Actinium Consulting among almost 250 selected BI users from all industries, they would particularly like these tools to be easier to integrate and quicker to implement in the future. The call for lower license fees, on the other hand, is relatively rare. According to the survey, only one in five BI users has little or nothing to criticize about the solutions. Another third are satisfied with certain compromises, while all the others give a clearly critical rating. They give the business intelligence tools either only mediocre grades (31 percent) or shows even completely dissatisfied (17 percent).

On the question of what should improve in the future at the products, almost two-thirds of the BI managers surveyed call a better integration capability and a similar number the faster implementability. In third place on the user wish list is greater user-friendliness (57 percent), followed by a more needs-oriented functional profile. Lower licensing costs for business intelligence software, on the other hand, seem to be comparatively less important to users. They stand after the Actinium survey surprisingly only for 37 percent of the companies in front on the agenda.

“The users have thus shown the manufacturers the red card,” judges Actinium CEO Klaus Hüttl. He points out that this judgment coincides with the results of a survey from the spring of this year. In it, it was determined that users questioned the original software decision in almost every second case during the course of the project. “One of the central causes of user criticism is that manufacturers of BI software often do not focus on practical requirements, but lure with interesting features, fast implementation cycles or integration arguments,” explains Hüttl. “However, these promises are not sufficiently kept in practice, which leads to this critical attitude of the users.”