1. Survey Results: Trends in the Use of
Collaboration in BI Tools
Wayne Eckerson
Principal, BI Leader Consulting
January, 2012

2. Respondent Profile
BI or IT Professional 69%
BI Consultant 23%
BI Sponsor or User 8%
Based on 227 respondents, BI Leadership Forum, January 2012 (www.bileadership.com).
www.bileader.com

3. Do you think collaboration tools can
improve analysis and decision making?
Yes 87%
No 3%
Not sure 10%

4. Is collaboration part of the criteria
used to select your BI tools?
Next BI Tool Current BI Tool
58%
Yes
16%
9%
No
74%
33%
Not sure
10%

5. Have you implemented collaboration
software?
Collaborative BI Collaboration Platform
45%
Yes
70%
42%
No
28%
13%
Not Sure
2%

6. Percentage of users who don’t use
available collaboration features
Collaborative BI tools 26%
Stand-alone collaboration platform 11%

7. Types of collaboration by platform
When Analyzing Data When Making Decisions
Send email 82%
67%
Hold meetings 80%
92%
Make phone calls 60%
55%
Use a general-purpose collaboration 26%
platform 17%
They generally don't collaborate 17%
8%
Use collaboration features of a BI tool 16%
11%
Other 4%
3%

8. Ranking of desired BI collaboration features
Annotate content 67%
62%
Shared workspaces 60%
58%
Save current views (snapshots) 52%
50%
Suggest causes of alerts 47%
47%
Attach content to a comment or workspace 44%
39%
Publish content to a server 39%
39%
Attach bookmarks and links to content 38%
38%
Decision tools (e.g., SWOT, pro/con) 37%
34%
Connect to people or workspaces 32%
31%
Favorites 31%
21%
Stream updates of connections 20%
17%
Other 5%

9. Ranking of Collaborative BI Features by Actual Usage
Publish content to a server 35%
28%
Send "live" content via email 26%
25%
Comments 22%
19%
Annotate content 16%
15%
Threaded discussions 15%
14%
Statistics 13%
11%
Wikis 7%
7%
Ratings 6%
6%
Suggest people or content to follow 4%
4%
Decision tools (e.g., SWOT, pro/con) 4%
3%
Stream updates of connections 3%
3%
Other 3%
2%

10. Collaboration Platform Collaborative BI
Shared workspaces 28% 55%
Publish content to a server 35% 49%
Instant messaging or chat 7% 35%
Threaded discussions 15% 29%
Wikis 7% 27%
Comments 21%
22%
Web conferencing 6% 21%
Connect to people or workspaces 4% 19%
Attach content to a comment or workspace 11% 17%
View user profile pages 2% 17%
Attach bookmarks and links to content 16%
15%
Annotate content 12% 16%
11%
NONE
Send "live" content via email 10%
25% Collaboration
26%
Favorites 10% 14% Features
Statistics 10%13%
Save current views (snapshots) 8% 19%
Implemented
Ratings 6%8%
Suggest people or content to follow 4% 8%
Other 3%5%
Decision tools (e.g., SWOT, pro/con) 3%
4%
Suggest causes of alerts 3%
3%
Stream updates of connections 3%
3%
Recommend next steps 3%
3%

11. Collaboration by type of user
BI Collaboration Collaboration Platforms
Power Users (business analysts, report 84%
developers) 77%
Casual Users (executives, managers) 34%
57%
External Users (customers, partners, suppliers) 11%
18%
Front-line workers 14%
30%
IT department 38%
56%
None 6%
4.3%