Business Intelligence BuyerView ReportInsight into today’s BI software buyer

At Software Advice, we speak daily to businesses considering of businesses considering a BI software purchase. We tapped into a subset of that data and determined the following key points:

• More than 60 percent of prospective BI software buyers are not IT professionals, and instead list job titles that correspond with business professionals.

• Almost half of all prospective buyers are looking for BI software in order to better visualize their data. Similarly, the most-requested BI tools among buyers are dashboards and scorecards.

• All but a small fraction of prospective BI software buyers want integrated suites, but remain unsure of a deployment model.

Abstract

Broken down by job title, more than 60 percent of the prospective BI buyers we spoke to were not IT professionals.

37%

63%

Business Professional IT Professional

Prospective Buyers by Job Title

Nearly 40 percent of buyers we spoke to were evaluating software because they wanted to better visualize the data they were collecting.

Better Data Visualization

Out-of-Date/Non-Existent Software

Need Reporting Across Multiple Systems

Automation

Need Better Organization

Scalability

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Top Reasons For Buying New BI Software

Ninety-five percent of the prospective BI software buyers we spoke to were only interested in evaluating an integrated suite.

1%4%

95%

Integrated SuiteBest-of-BreedMultiple Products

Buyers’ Integration Requirements

Surprisingly, more than 84 percent of the people we sampled had not yet made a decision on a deployment model.

84%

5%

11%

On-premiseCloud-basedUnknown

Deployment Preferences Among Buyers

Among both integrated suite and best-of-breed buyers, dashboards and scorecards were the most sought-after BI tools.

Best-of-Breed Buyers’ Top-Requested Tools

Dashboards and Scorecards

Query and Report Writing

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

Integrated-suite buyers were most interested in BI tools such as data warehousing, extract, transform and load and online analytical processing tools.

Integrated Suite Buyers’ Top-Requested Tools

Dashboards and Scorecards

Query and Report Writing

Data Warehousing

Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

When asked about features, prospective buyers mentioned customizable dashboards, user-friendly interfaces and data storage capabilities most often.

Top-Requested BI Software Features

A combined 25 percent of all prospective BI software buyers were from organizations in the healthcare and manufacturing industries.

Prospective BI Software Buyers by Industry

46%

6% 7%

7%

8%

12%

13%HealthcareManufacturingSoftwareGovernmentBanking/FinanceRetailOther

Thirty-six percent of companies included in our sample had between 101 and 500 employees, making mid-sized organizations the leading segment.

Buyer Size by Number of Employees

30%

11%36%

12%

8%2%

11-2021-5051-100101-500501-1,0001,001+

Nearly 35 percent of prospective BI software buyers included in the sample were using a CRM or an ERP system to gather, track and report on data.

Prospective Buyers’ Current Methods

8%

19%

20%

20%

33% Other BI SoftwareExcelProprietary BI SoftwareNo BI SoftwareManual Methods

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Software Advice is a trusted resource for software buyers. The company's website, www.softwareadvice.com, provides detailed reviews, comparisons and research to help organizations choose the right software. Meanwhile, the company’s team of software analysts provide free telephone consultations to help each software buyer identify systems that best fit their needs. In the process, Software Advice connects software buyers and sellers, generating high-quality opportunities for software vendors.

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