BARC’s BI Survey 15, the world´s largest survey of business intelligence (BI) software users, is at the half-way mark, with a thousand participants so far. The survey tracks trends in BI usage and customer ratings of BI products and vendors.

The results so far show that the largest year-over-year increase in BI usage so far is in production (i.e., manufacturing and operations), which is up from 21 percent in 2008 to 53 percent in 2015. This increase is likely due to the growth in machine and sensor data that require big data analytics to optimize production processes and predict machine failure.  Top management exhibits the next biggest increase, with BI usage growing from 53 percent in 2008 to 71 percent in 2015, driven by more data-driven executives who want better transparency into business operations and performance.  Finance remains the top user of BI, with an 89% penetration rate in the survey. (See Figure 1).

The BARC survey also publishes customer ratings of dozens of BI products. To get appear in the survey, a product needs ratings from more than 30 customers. Products with the most respondents so far are Qlik, Microsoft SSRS and IBM Cognos BI. Eckerson Group, which partners with BARC, will help write up the survey results once the survey closes at the end of May.

To take  part in BARC’s BI Survey 15, click here.

Figure 1: Frequency of business departments using BI, 2008 to  2015