by Angela Guess

According to a recent press release, “BARC’s annual BI Survey results are launched on the new bi-survey.com website. Major findings this year include the continued surge in the use of business intelligence (BI) in production/operations departments, customer analysis is named as the #1 investment area in new BI projects, and several trends including collaboration and sensor data analysis are now established as critical BI components for many organizations. Finance, management and sales departments continue to lead the way in the use of BI, but with little variation in usage rates since 2014. Elsewhere, production/operations departments continue a strong upwards trajectory, rising from 20% to 53% usage in the last eight years.”

Carsten Bange, CEO of BARC, commented, “While BI has always been strong in sales and finance, production and operations departments have traditionally been more cautious about adopting it… But with the general trend for using data to support decision-making, this has all changed. Technology for areas such as event processing and real-time data integration and visualization has become more widely available in recent years. Also, the wave of big data from the Internet of Things and the Industrial Internet has increased awareness and demand for analytics, and will likely continue to drive further BI usage in production and operations.”

The release goes on, “It is clear that some BI trends that began with a buzz a few years ago now serve as critical BI components for a growing number of companies. Areas such as collaboration and spatial/location analysis are reported as “in use” by more than 20 percent of respondents. At 12 percent, cloud BI is now in double-digits with more companies planning to leverage it over the longer term. Social media analysis is the only listed trend in use by less than 10 percent of Survey respondents this year.”

Read more at Business Wire.

Photo credit: BARC