Business Intelligence (BI) pros continue to look for outside professional services. Forty-nine percent of decision makers say their firms are already engaging and/or expanding their engagements with outside data and analytic service providers, and another 22% plan to do so in the next 12 months. There are two main reasons for this sustained trend:

  • The breadth and depth of BI deployments cannot be internally replicated at scale. Delivering widely adopted and effective BI solutions is not easy. It requires rigor in methodology, discipline in execution, the right resources, and the application of numerous best practices. No internal enterprise tech organization can claim this wealth of expertise and experience; this only comes after delivering thousands of successful and unsuccessful BI projects — which we believe is solely the realm of management consultants and systems integrators. These partners have collectively accumulated such experience over many years and thousands of clients and projects.
  • Implementation partners help connect technology and business priorities. While business and technology pros ultimately work toward the same goal — improving their companies' top and bottom lines — they often use different approaches to get there. Business pros often have a preference for a particular BI tool and just want to get their jobs done quickly, efficiently, and effectively. It's not that they don't care about a single version of the truth, enterprise software standards, security, and procurement guidelines — it's just that getting their jobs done trumps everything else, while technology pros have different goals. Finding a middle ground between opposing priorities is tough. When all else fails, firms look for a reputable, well-respected professional services organization that can act as a referee and provide an objective road map to align business and technology management goals, objectives, and priorities.

Take a look at our recently published research report – The Forrester Wave™: Business Intelligence Platform Implementation Service Providers, Q2 2017 – where we review

  • Forrester recommended BI implementation service provider shortlisting and selection methodology and
  • Evaluate 13 top providers in this market