Concepts such as CRM , ERP, etc., were not long ago only known within companies by IT departments and the department involved (Marketing and Sales for CRM, Operations for ERP, HR for the intranet, etc.). Today, they are concepts that are handled and understood by anyone within the business world.
As for Business Intelligence, I think that unfortunately it is still the domain of experts and technologists. Nowadays it is very common to find business decision makers who are not clear about the business owner data functionalities, areas of influence, potential and business benefits of a Business Intelligence system. BI is still known by a few, it has not been democratized, it has not jumped the technological barriers to become part of each and every department of the company. In my opinion there are several reasons for this.
BI needs to speak the language of the business: traditionally, and even today, BI is focused on from a technological perspective and not a business perspective. The necessary emphasis is not placed on the advantages and benefits of adapting a BI system. It is done in technological terms, but not in terms of business, of ROI, after all. The path of entry of a BI system into the company continues to be through the technology director, when it should be from the general management. BI manufacturers have their natural interlocutor in IT managers, when they should be the business decision-makers. This narrow vision is one of the impediments to BI systems becoming popular in companies.
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German Pineiro's BlogBI is still perceived as expensive, focused on large companies. This perception is true for many BI platforms, still focused on large accounts. But many of them have already seen that the future is in SMEs and are adapting their technologies to be able to access them. In this sense, the SaaS or Cloud Computing model (pay per use, access to the platform through a web browser, no installations, zero investments in licenses or hardware, etc.) is the most widely adopted when it comes to making a Business Intelligence system accessible to small and medium-sized companies. The large BI manufacturers, such as MicroStrategy, BusinessObjects, etc. are making great efforts to offer their platforms under this model. Others, such as Litebi, RoamBI, BIME, are "native SaaS.
