CIOs wrestle with too many enterprise BI tools

Infoworld published a post called Forrester: CIOs wrestle with too many enterprise BI tools, where they told that according to a survey released by Forrester Research, companies are using three to five different business intelligence analysis and reporting tools, despite consolidation efforts.

The main survey results are:

- More than 40 percent of enterprise IT decision makers said their companies are using three to five different business intelligence analysis and reporting tools.

- The survey also found BI becoming ubiquitous, with almost 60 percent of respondents saying they were deploying BI, data warehousing, or data integration tools across their enterprises.

- BI is also evolving beyond reporting only, according to Forrester, though only 27 percent of respondents said they were using it to try to gain a major competitive advantage.

- Despite the trend toward self-service BI, three-quarters of respondents said most reports and dashboards are still created by the IT department. And two-thirds said their end-users felt the BI tools were somewhat or very difficult to learn.

This survey is interesting, showing how the companies are using BI. Unfortunatelly, although several BI consultants (myself included) are always talking about standardization, many companies still want to buy more tools. It hides the real problem: an organization dysfunction, and in the most of time a lack of management commitment, also creating the illusion that the company is investing in BI. The companies are spending their money, but they are implementing a BI poorly built.