Software Advice speaks to prospective buyers from hundreds of companies looking for Business Intelligence (BI) software.

1. Business Intelligence
BuyerView Report
Insight into today’s BI software buyer

2. At Software Advice, we speak daily to businesses considering of businesses
considering a BI software purchase. We tapped into a subset of that data and
determined the following key points:
• More than 60 percent of prospective BI software buyers are not IT
professionals, and instead list job titles that correspond with business
professionals.
• Almost half of all prospective buyers are looking for BI software in order to
better visualize their data. Similarly, the most-requested BI tools among buyers
are dashboards and scorecards.
• All but a small fraction of prospective BI software buyers want integrated
suites, but remain unsure of a deployment model.
Abstract

3. Broken down by job title, more than 60 percent of the prospective BI buyers we
spoke to were not IT professionals.
37%
63%
Business Professional
IT Professional
Prospective Buyers by Job Title

4. Nearly 40 percent of buyers we spoke to were evaluating software because they
wanted to better visualize the data they were collecting.
Better Data Visualization
Out-of-Date/Non-Existent Software
Need Reporting Across Multiple Systems
Automation
Need Better Organization
Scalability
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Top Reasons For Buying New BI Software

5. Ninety-five percent of the prospective BI software buyers we spoke to were only
interested in evaluating an integrated suite.
1%
4%
95%
Integrated Suite
Best-of-Breed
Multiple Products
Buyers’ Integration Requirements

6. Surprisingly, more than 84 percent of the people we sampled had not yet made a
decision on a deployment model.
84%
5%
11%
On-premise
Cloud-based
Unknown
Deployment Preferences Among Buyers

7. Among both integrated suite and best-of-breed buyers, dashboards and
scorecards were the most sought-after BI tools.
Best-of-Breed Buyers’ Top-Requested Tools
Dashboards and Scorecards
Query and Report Writing
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

8. Integrated-suite buyers were most interested in BI tools such as data
warehousing, extract, transform and load and online analytical processing tools.
Integrated Suite Buyers’ Top-Requested Tools
Dashboards and Scorecards
Query and Report Writing
Data Warehousing
Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Data Mining and Predictive Analytics
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

9. When asked about features, prospective buyers mentioned customizable
dashboards, user-friendly interfaces and data storage capabilities most often.
Top-Requested BI Software Features

10. A combined 25 percent of all prospective BI software buyers were from
organizations in the healthcare and manufacturing industries.
Prospective BI Software Buyers by Industry
46%
6%
7%
7%
8%
12%
13%
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Software
Government
Banking/Finance
Retail
Other

11. Thirty-six percent of companies included in our sample had between 101 and
500 employees, making mid-sized organizations the leading segment.
Buyer Size by Number of Employees
30%
11%
36%
12%
8%2%
11-20
21-50
51-100
101-500
501-1,000
1,001+

12. Nearly 35 percent of prospective BI software buyers included in the sample were
using a CRM or an ERP system to gather, track and report on data.
Prospective Buyers’ Current Methods
8%
19%
20%
20%
33% Other BI Software
Excel
Proprietary BI Software
No BI Software
Manual Methods

13. Read the full report
Get free price quotes on top
BI Software
Get unbiased reviews & free
demos on top BI Software
Learn more about Business Intelligence Software
Read Report
Get Free Quotes
Get Free Demos

14. Software Advice is a trusted resource for software buyers. The company's website,
www.softwareadvice.com, provides detailed reviews, comparisons and research to
help organizations choose the right software. Meanwhile, the company’s team of
software analysts provide free telephone consultations to help each software buyer
identify systems that best fit their needs. In the process, Software Advice connects
software buyers and sellers, generating high-quality opportunities for software
vendors.
@SoftwareAdvice /company/software-advice
@SoftwareAdvice/SoftwareAdvice