The day is coming when all employees will use business intelligence tools. Sound familiar? BI vendors have been forwarding this vision for years, though it remains mostly a vision.
BI remains the province mostly of data-analysis specialists because companies don't see the business case in equipping every employee with number-crunching tools. Usability, the time and expense of training, and up-front and ongoing costs were cited as barriers to BI adoption in an InformationWeek Research survey of 500 business technology professionals conducted in March. Just one in four respondents say their companies provide BI tools to more than a quarter of employees, the same level as in last year's survey.
Another problem is that too much work is required to customize BI tools for specific types of users, says Mark Smith, president of Ventana Research.
Source: Information Week, http://www.informationweek.com