BARC Data, BI and Analytics Trend Monitor 2024

Infographic: “BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2024”

The BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2024 is the latest edition of BARC’s annual review of the trends shaping the market.

Based on a worldwide survey of 2,398 people from companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

 

 

Boost Finance Productivity with Unified Performance Management

Infographic: “Boost Finance Productivity with Unified Performance Management”

“Boost Finance Productivity with Unified Performance Management” is a Topical Survey published by BARC in October 2023. Our study examines the following questions:

  • –– What paths are companies taking to unify performance management, and how far have they come?
  • –– What are their goals and what challenges do they face in implementing them?
  • –– What sets apart the most successful companies in this endeavor?

Based on a worldwide survey of 198 practitioners and leaders from companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

Infographic: Boost Finance Productivity with Unified Performance Management

Data Mesh study

Infographic: “Data Mesh: Game Changer or Just Hot Air?”

“Data Mesh: Game Changer or Just Hot Air?” is a Topical Survey published by BARC in May 2023. Our study examines the following questions:

  • – Is data mesh being applied in practice and how is it understood?
  • – What functional, technical and organizational measures are companies taking to introduce data mesh and how far have they come so far?
  • – Does data mesh place special demands on the technology?
  • – Is it possible to implement it in an established data landscape, or is it necessary to start from scratch?

Based on a worldwide survey of 345 practitioners and leaders from companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

Data Mesh infographic

Data Warehouse and Data Vault Adoption Trends

Infographic: “Data Warehouse and Data Vault Adoption Trends”

Data Warehouse and Data Vault Adoption Trends – Modeling, Modernization, and Automation” is a market research study jointly published by BARC and Eckerson Group. This global survey-based report examines data warehouse and data vault adoption trends in modern analytics environments, including architecture types, priorities, and automation.

Based on a worldwide survey of 238 data and analytics practitioners and leaders from companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

Data Warehouse and Data Vault Adoption Trends infographic

 

The State of ESG & Sustainability Reporting featured image

Infographic: “The State of ESG & Sustainability Reporting”

“The State of ESG & Sustainability Reporting – Challenges Tools and Outlook” is a BARC market research study that examines the major hurdles on the road to smooth and trusted ESG reporting and how leading organizations tackle these challenges, their motivation, approaches and the tools they use to ensure the flow of trusted data.

Based on a worldwide survey of 283 companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

The State of ESG & Sustainability Reporting infographic

 

BARC logo

Power BI – The Winner Takes it All?

Robert Tischler Rüdiger SpiesFebruary 2023: BARC Research Fellow Rüdiger Spies and Senior Analyst Robert Tischler examine the impact Microsoft Power BI has had on the BI & analytics market. Microsoft has gained a large market share in a relatively short amount of time with Power BI. But can it succeed in becoming to BI & analytics what SAP is to ERP?

The trigger

Recently, many of our customers have been asking whether it will be enough to focus only on Microsoft’s Power BI for dashboards, reports and BI in general in the future.

Microsoft’s success

It looks as if Microsoft has succeeded in pushing many of its competitors to the edge of (or even out of) the BI & analytics market, thus generating a lot of business for its own data & analytics offering.

Simply put, Power BI is an entry portal for analyzing, distributing and, above all, visualizing business data, and is also designed to put a stop to the rampant, uncoordinated proliferation of Excel spreadsheets. IT strategists and IT architects have liked the solution from the get-go and it has also become very popular among users. It has even been widely adopted in financial departments because the initial visible cost of using Power BI is comparatively low. Microsoft has thus succeeded in gaining a large market share in a relatively short amount of time. According to the BARC study The BI & Analytics Survey 23, almost 30 percent of companies currently opt for Power BI and almost 60 percent evaluate it.

Will Power BI become to BI & analytics what SAP is to ERP?

Although the functions and areas of application are very different, there are significant parallels between Microsoft and SAP, as well as some revealing conclusions.

One similarity lies in the respective technical and organizational complexity of ERP and BI & analytics. The new introduction of an ERP system is often about harmonizing a heterogeneous application landscape, while the introduction of BI & analytics software often aims to bring about a uniform view of the data available in the company. The initial motivation is therefore comparable. However, the markets for ERP and BI & analytics are still very diverse and, conservatively speaking, there are at least 100 providers in each market segment. Another common factor is the complexity of the business problems these market segments address. Depending on the individual company and the vertical concerned, they are tasked with solving a very specific set of issues.

Introducing complex analytics solutions is rarely straightforward. Even for larger midsize companies (with 1,000 – 5,000 employees), this is still a complex project (e.g., due to cost and lack of skills). Such users have often relied on reports integrated into business applications in the era of enterprise BI platforms, or they simply use Excel. This situation has changed with the introduction of self-service products (e.g., Qlik, Tableau) and, to a lesser extent, Power BI, which place a strong emphasis on visualization. Nevertheless, the introduction of such BI products requires preparation and potentially the harmonization of data from different data sources and a common data management system (data warehouse) independent of the operational systems and data quality management. At this point, the limits of the current version of Power BI are reached. Other products are required within more complex analytics solutions, especially in larger enterprises with lots of users. It is barely conceivable that Power BI can currently replace highly complex analytics solutions such as those from Teradata and SAS Institute. This would also mean that the specific advantages of Power BI (e.g., ease of use) are lost.

This returns us to the question posed above: As complexity continues to increase, there will continue to be a need for BI & analytics capabilities that go beyond the functionality of simple reporting, dashboards and especially visualization.

Although the importance of Power BI will continue to increase, we assume it will not be the only dominant solution in the overall market for BI & analytics because the range of requirements will continue to be too broad to map in just one tool. According to systems theory, it can be argued that complex tasks can only very rarely be meaningfully addressed with simple solutions. Complex tasks demand a complex response. In relation to the question above, this means that we do not expect a single tool from a single vendor – not even Power BI – will be sufficient to get complete answers from existing data and, increasingly importantly, also for business planning. Power BI remains a good starting option for simple data analysis, and also to build awareness of data across the business.

Conclusion and recommendation

Rather than using just one tool “because others do it too”, companies are still well advised to keep up to date with the ever-changing range of BI & analytics tools on the market. This is because the requirements of one company may differ significantly from those of others. To successfully implement BI & analytics, it remains important to focus on a broad skill set for in-house teams and not to depend on just one tool landscape. Ultimately, the selection of suitable tools and their use should lead to improved exploitation of the potential of enterprise data in order to keep ahead of the competition.

Trend Monitor 2023

Infographic: “BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023”

The BARC Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023 is the latest edition of BARC’s annual review of the trends shaping the market.

Based on a worldwide survey of 1,823 people from companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

BARC Trend Monitor infographic

 

 

Infographic: “BARC Data Culture Survey 23”

“BARC Data Culture Survey 23 – How To Liberalize Data Access To Empower Data Users” is a BARC market research study that examines how companies can improve their data culture and the obstacles they are likely to face along the way.

Based on a worldwide survey of 384 companies of various sizes and industries, this infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

Data Culture Survey 23 infographic

 

Predictive Planning and Forecasting On The Rise

Infographic: “Predictive Planning and Forecasting on the Rise – Hype or Reality?”

Predictive Planning and Forecasting on the Rise – Hype or Reality?” is a 2022 BARC report based on a survey of 295 companies.

It examines the nature and current level of use of predictive planning and forecasting and draws comparisons with the results of past BARC studies.

This infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

Predictive Planning & Forecasting infographic

 

The Future of Data Architecture

Infographic: “The Future of Data Architecture – Has the Data Warehouse Had Its Day?”

The Future of Data Architecture – Has the Data Warehouse Had Its Day?” is a 2022 BARC report based on a survey of 268 companies.

The study seeks to discover which data architecture works best for today’s enterprise. We examined current approaches to data architecture and whether classic data architecture concepts such as data warehouse, data lake and data lakehouse are viable for the future.

This infographic highlights some of the key findings from the study.

Click here to find out more and download the full study.

The Future of Data Architecture infographic