IT professionals in the UK, EU and the US agree that BI users are a deep source of exasperation.
A survey commissioned by BI dashboards supplier LogiXML found an IT pro population united in grief across the Atlantic.
According to the survey, IT professionals confront a user population adamant about their BI needs, but woefully ignorant. Asked if they would give users direct access to data sources, 20% said: "Are you kidding me? Not if my life depended on it." And 10% would rather perform dentistry on themselves than start a new BI project.
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The top three reasons selected for why BI projects fail were: unrealistic requirements (358 respondents), lack of budget (337), and requirements that change too rapidly. In other words, not IT's fault. Seven percent of respondents were able to respond within a year to user demands.
Tongue in cheek though respondents may have been, these findings might point to evidence of the much lamented business-IT divide regarding BI. And 203 of these IT professionals complained that business users rely on telepathy to communicate their requirements, while 52 reported that users "scream like banshees" when putting their needs across.
Other findings indicate a significant lack of interest in the hot trends of the moment, mobile BI and big data analytics. Forty-six percent said their organisations were free of mobile BI, and only 17% were using big data analytics.
Nevertheless, 360 respondents did testify to the popularity of mobile BI, outnumbering those who are not using it (349). And 529 are using, pursuing or future-gazing big data, in contrast to the 228 refuseniks or cynics.
Another survey, conducted earlier this year among 36 large UK corporate organizations, uncovered a more positive embrace of mobile BI. The Corporate IT Forum's Business Intelligence and Management Information survey found that 15.2% of respondents were implementing mobile systems in 2012 versus 8.7% the previous year. But big data failed to register at that time, though it had cropped up in the blue chip user organisation's 2012 IT strategy survey.
Meanwhile, 20% of the LogiXML survey's respondents described their BI programmes as like Pacman, "traditional but entertaining." Second top was Call of Duty, "cool and sophisticated, but hard to use and somewhat violent."
Out of 757 responses, 84 were from the UK and 29 from other EU member states. The rest were from the US.
