Australian firms report BI user increase

Over half of Australian organisations want to put business intelligence (BI) into the hands of more users in the short term, but many lack the strategies to facilitate a more broader-based adoption strategy, according to a survey conducted by Cognos.

Approximately 61 percent of respondents surveyed by Cognos in Australia described an increase in the number of BI users as one of their short-term goals, with a further 33 percent calling it a “future focus”.

However, almost 40 percent of people surveyed do not have a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC) within their organisation, casting doubt over their ability to execute on such a strategy.

A BICC is an organisational structure that groups people with interrelated disciplines, domains of knowledge, experiences and skills, for the purpose of promoting expertise and providing a managed, predictable approach to extending BI to more broad-based applications.

Of those organisations surveyed by Cognos that already have a BICC, 40 percent said it is “very critical” to the success of their BI implementation and enterprise-wide standardisation efforts. A further 50 per cent said it is “important” to these efforts.

David Merchant, marketing director of A/NZ at Cognos, said: “As business intelligence becomes increasingly more strategic, organisations are looking for ways to manage and support deployments across divisions, regions and functions through the standardisation of technology.”