Self-service reporting is biggest big data challenge

A Matillion study has revealed that the ability to carry out self-service reporting is the single biggest management information challenge.

This is followed closely by the ability to pull together and analyse information from diverse business systems – multiple ERP systems, databases and line-of-business systems.

The cross-functional and cross-industry survey was conducted by cloud business intelligence provider Matillion, in order to answer one question: "What is your biggest management information challenge?"

Delivering self-service reporting and analysis was named by 35.8% of respondents as the most pressing issue that they face. 27.4% of respondents stated that reporting and analysing across multiple systems was their biggest challenge, reflecting the difficulties that businesses face when trying to collate a single version of truth from multiple data sources and systems.

Matthew Scullion, Managing Director at Matillion, said: "A third of all our respondents cite delivering self-service reporting as their biggest management information challenge. Almost another third tell us they simply want to be able to report across multiple systems."

"This tallies with what we hear every day from customers on the ground. Clearly many businesses don’t have this capability already, which we believe is due to the cost and complexity of traditional Business Intelligence systems. That’s why so many rely on manually produced spreadsheets for management information."

"What real businesses really want from Business Intelligence isn’t at the ‘high end, hi-tech, hype’ end of the spectrum, but is instead much more prosaic: self-serve reporting and analytics, ideally coupled to the ability to pull together and analyse information drawn from multiple systems."

Matthew Scullion concludes: "For all the talk of Big Data, Mobile BI, Predictive Analytics and Data Visualisation, the evidence is that the real management information needs of most executives are far more down-to-earth: fast, easy, self-service access to data — for the people that need it, and from whichever data sources are relevant."

The 12 month study questioned over 10,000 business managers and senior decision makers across 150 countries and 18 sectors.

2,130 respondents were finance department professionals, including 1,161 CFOs, 1,972 were IT professionals, including 810 senior decision makers (CIOs and IT Managers), 2,455 were senior business and line-of-business executives, including 1,217 CEOs, and 1,328 were business analysts.