Business Intelligence Offers the Promise of Widespread Benefits, Yet Many Challenges Remain

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• USA - English

HACKENSACK, New Jersey, February 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Ness Technologies, Inc., a global provider of information technology solutions and services, today announced the results of a study on the state of enterprise business intelligence (BI). Titled "The Ness Technologies Market Pulse Study," the research shows that although companies are expecting significant benefits from their BI initiatives - such as improved transparency into corporate data for business planning and decision-making - actual results are lagging expected outcomes.

According to the study, BI initiatives have encountered a number of challenges and as a result, investments in BI programs have not yielded the expected returns. Such issues as lack of alignment with company strategy, resistance to change, inaccessible data, and challenges in enterprise data integration have contributed to this underperformance.

"Business Intelligence strategies, solutions, and technologies are top of mind for many of our clients in 2010," said Larry Scott, President, Ness Global Industries. "However, as the returns on earlier investments in BI have underperformed expectations, organizations are determining the best next steps to maximize BI benefits. Through our outcomes-based BI services, Ness has been working with clients to refocus their BI initiatives to ensure their investments pay off going forward."

The Ness Technologies Market Pulse Study of top level business and IT executives at companies with over $500 million in revenues was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2009. Among the major findings are:

    - BI initiatives are being driven by the ability to have better
    transparency into company data for business planning and decision-making
    (54%), a desire for more insight into the business to keep up with rapid
    change (43%), and real-time analysis capabilities (43%).

    - Although companies feel they have adequate access to planning
    data (73%) and financial data (61%), they are less comfortable about
    their access to customer data (53%) and market trend data (52%).

    - The top four BI pain points are all centered on data: data silos
    (47%), data integration (35%), mapping data (31%), and data
    cleansing/modeling (31%).

    - More than half of respondents report that results achieved are
    lagging expected outcomes in 14 of 16 potential outcome categories. The
    largest gaps are in business agility, data integration, and new revenue
    opportunities.

What contributes to BI success?

The survey uncovered actions companies can take to increase the effectiveness of their BI programs. Alignment with business strategy and good organizational communications are strong indicators of success for BI initiatives.

"Although the benefits of BI have been elusive to many organizations, there are steps that can be taken to move the needle on your BI program from expected to achieved outcomes," continued Scott. "Managing data integration more effectively and ensuring alignment across the company or business unit can bring companies both operational and competitive advantage."

Ness BI Services

Driving real business insights lies at the heart of corporate performance management and leads to bottom line results. Ness offers four core service offerings designed to accelerate business outcomes, speed time to market, and lower overall costs of information/data initiatives and systems. These include:

    - Architecture Development and Data Consolidation - To address multiple
    redundant systems using the same data, each requiring their own support
    team and hardware, Ness designs and executes architectures to consolidate
    data from multiple sources.

    - Data Governance - Often data quality is not trusted within an
    organization and end-users can't get consistent reporting across the
    enterprise, Ness develops comprehensive programs to monitor and maintain
    data quality.

    - Enterprise BI and Data Warehouse Development - To bring together,
    integrate and store data from multiple sources, Ness uses proven
    methodologies to build data warehouses.

    - Integration and Maintenance - Ness migrates, upgrades, and supports BI
    systems.

Survey Methodology

A 16 question online survey, the Ness Technologies Business Intelligence Market Pulse Study was conducted and analyzed by Ness and IDG Research Services in the fourth quarter of 2009. Of the more than 140 respondents, 56% were IT executives and 44% were business executives. 34 percent of the companies surveyed had revenues of $10 billion or more, while the average revenue for companies participating in the study was $5.6 billion. Respondents were from a variety of industries with the highest percentages representing financial services firms (46%), healthcare (18%), and life sciences (8%).

To learn more about Ness Business Intelligence services or to download the full "Business Intelligence Market Pulse Study," visit http://www.ness.com/BI.

About Ness Technologies

Ness Technologies is a global provider of IT and business services and solutions with specialized expertise in software product engineering; system integration, application development and consulting; and software distribution. Ness delivers its portfolio of solutions and services using a global delivery model combining local teams with off-shore, and near-shore capabilities. With about 7,800 employees, Ness maintains operations in 18 countries, and partners with numerous software and hardware vendors worldwide. For more information about Ness Technologies, visit http://www.ness.com.

    Media Contacts:
    Jennifer Scott
    Phone: +1-201-371-0450
    Email: [email protected]

    David Kanaan
    Intl: +972-54-425-5307
    Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Ness Technologies Inc