Economic forces push many organizations to re-examine and reprioritize their BI initiatives. The increased cost of capital now raises the bar on what expected return from BI investments needs to be, deferring or canceling many lower-return projects, and escalating those with high potential to deliver high business value and ROI.
However, projected returns and value can only be achieved when BI initiatives are well designed, implemented, and operated. This makes a focus on BI success paramount for data leaders that simultaneously need to deliver quality and value.
The Dresner Advisory Services Business Intelligence (BI) Success Index®—like the companion BI Value Index®—is inspired by the many and varied economic indicators used globally by business and government leaders and their teams of analysts, economists, and researchers. Such indicators serve many functions: informing, provoking, and encouraging thought, discussion, and investment.
Success has many dimensions—too many to capture in a broad-based survey. Our survey question does not define success; individuals characterize the success of their BI initiatives based on their own perceptions and considerations. This is the ninth year Dresner Advisory Services recorded data on the success of BI initiatives, and the fourth year of the BI Success Index. In 2023, the BI Success Index stands at 90 percent of organizations viewing their BI initiatives extremely successful, very successful, or moderately successful.
This year, our data show significant increases in the number of successful BI initiatives as levels of BI penetration increase among users. Human factors such as support from senior management, culture, communication, and understanding business objectives—not specific technologies—once again are the main factors contributing to BI success. The presence of data and analytics leadership also correlates strongly with the most instances of the highest level of BI success.
Organizations should use our data on BI success to reinforce their business cases for BI initiatives. When properly applied and implemented, BI is a proven, business-enabling technology that delivers real business value. Ongoing challenges posed by external forces create a need to improve data sources and quality so that organizations can apply BI and analytics to both shorter-term operational needs (especially reducing costs and increasing efficiencies) and longer-term strategic planning (especially important as the impact of external forces starts to wane during the next 18 months).
This need in turn creates a requirement to invest broadly in a BI and analytics strategy that includes advanced analytics. As these investments are made, data leaders must ensure that they can deliver promised returns and show value to the organization. Although the quest to deliver the highest level of success with BI is an ongoing endeavor that improves with time and experience, data leaders that take an increased focus on success and value will help to even better align the data and analytics abilities of their organizations with their business needs and priorities.
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