User-friendly BI

The "Business Intelligence as a Service Market Study" looks at the status quo of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and business intelligence (BI) application usage, as well as the benefits of and need for BI applications.

In addition, reasons for buying BI as a Service (BIaaS) as well as advantages of and reservations against BIaaS are highlighted. Globalization, competitive pressure, changing trends, changing regulatory requirements and economic crises increase the demands on companies today.

Medium-sized companies also need to implement a BI application in the long term, because wrong decisions due to insufficient information can hit a medium-sized company harder than diversified corporations.

Due to limited resources, many mid-sized companies are reluctant to implement BI. Instead of a customized BI application, the concept of BIaaS is an alternative that needs to be evaluated.

The implementation of BIaaS is shortened compared to a customized BI application. Companies can access a wide range of standard reports and functions anytime and from anywhere. All employees always access the same up-to-date application.

Operation, support and further development are outsourced. This relieves the IT department. The BI software is remunerated via a rental fee. The costs are transparent and plannable.

User-friendliness, up-to-date and modern tools (e.g. dashboards) as well as fast, mobile data availability that can be used anywhere are very important when deciding on BIaaS (Business Intelligence as a Service). Transparent and predictable costs are seen as a significant advantage of BIaaS.

Cost savings and accounting period play a subordinate role. It is very important to the companies surveyed that the BI application can be adapted to company-specific conditions. The standardization of the BIaaS software and its rapid implementation are valued.

Whether the support, operation and further development of the BI application are carried out within the company itself or via the BIaaS service provider, thus relieving the IT department, is less important. What is important is that the BI application functions smoothly and that, in the event of a problem, prompt problem resolution is provided by support.

The topic of data storage is very sensitive for companies. Companies prefer to store their data on an in-house server due to data protection and data security.

The fears that a BIaaS application will make a company dependent on a BIaaS provider and that flexibility will suffer as a result of such a concept are among the lowest-rated reservations among the participating companies.