The Business Intelligence Blog

Interestingly, despite requiring fewer full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) to support BI deployments, the Best-in-Class are capable of completing BI projects, from start to finish, both on budget and within expected time frames. Additionally, they are delivering BI capabilities to more enterprise users than their counterparts.

This report investigates the key factors that organizations consider important in controlling the total cost of business intelligence implementations. Thirty-seven (37) organizations (20 percent) were found to be Best-in-Class at managing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their business intelligence solutions. Thirty-one percent of the 26 Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) BI users that took part in the survey achieved Best-in-Class status — a higher proportion of its installed base than any other major BI vendor. Figure 1 highlights the number of survey respondents that reported using each vendor’s software, together with the percentage of that vendor’s customers that achieved Best-in-Class.

Interesting article on CRM Buyer

From CIO magazine -

Hatch’s research shows that those companies that have recently rolled out a BI system notice financial pressures coming from several areas. The first, and most important, Hatch says, is the pressure to improve data integration from multiple applications (noted by 42 percent of the respondents). From interviews with those who took part in the survey, Hatch notes that “this single factor alone can dictate the success or failure of a BI initiative.”

“What I’m finding is that companies don’t really understand the extent of the data management challenges to BI until they get into it,” Hatch says. And if internal IT does not have the skill sets or resources to solve these data challenges, that can become pricey for many companies. “You have to invest internally or look outside for help,” Hatch says, “and both are expensive options.”