Data Quality and Data Culture Are the Top Trends in Business Intelligence

• BARC surveyed 1,823 people worldwide for its Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023 study.
• The survey provides insights into the top trends in data, business intelligence and analytics.
• Data quality, data culture and data governance are the top trends for 2023.

BARC publishes the Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2023 study. For the global survey, 1,823 users, consultants and vendors gave their opinion on the most important trends in data, business intelligence (BI) and analytics.

The responses provide comprehensive insight into regional, company and industry-specific differences in the use of data and analytics and show which trends are moving the BI market.

“Creating value from data has become a must for many companies to remain competitive. This survey shows once again that practitioners place higher value on the most fundamental characteristic of data – its quality – as well as the fundamental framework conditions for the successful use of data – data culture and data governance – than on advanced methods and approaches for data and analytics,” commented Dr. Carsten Bange, Managing Director of BARC and co-author of the study.

Data quality remains top trend

Data quality and master data management are ranked as the most important trend for the 6th year in a row. This is in line with the results of other BARC studies, which repeatedly show that companies are struggling with insufficient data quality. Related to this is the stable importance of data governance, which ranks 3rd again this year (see Figure).

The establishment of a ‘data culture’ is ranked as the 2nd most important trend. Since it was first included in the Trend Monitor in 2019, this trend has consistently ranked in the top 5 and continues to grow in importance. Establishing and fostering a data culture is critical to unlocking an organization’s full data potential.

Data discovery and self-service analytics rank 4th and 5th in the list of 19 top trends, underlining their importance. All of the top trends combine organizational and technological elements.

Trends in Europe

The importance of trends is perceived very differently in European countries. Eastern Europe, France and the United Kingdom in particular attach greater importance to most BI trends than the other European regions. Conversely, the German-speaking region (“DACH”) attaches significantly less importance to most trends

except agile BI development and master data/data quality management, both of which are rated more or less equally across Europe.

Overall, European perceptions reflect the overall ranking of the top trends: data discovery, data culture, master data/data quality management and data governance are seen as the most important trends this year.

Rising trends: cloud for data & analytics and data catalogs

Cloud for data & analytics has risen from 18th to 9th place in the rankings over the last 5 years (see Figure 2). A similar development can be observed for data catalogs, which has leapt from 19th to 10th place in the last 4 years.

Conversely, agile BI development has dropped 7 places to 14th in the last year. This approach to development is now so common that it is probably considered less important as a separate trend than other topics.