BI solutions are deployed widely today and organizations are reaping rich dividends from their investment in BI. It is however a widely acknowledged fact that the usage of BI even in the most progressive of organizations is restricted to 20% of the information consumers.

The reason for the limited deployment and usage is primarily due to the cost and complexity associated with BI solutions. While the business analysts and the senior management teams are consulted in designing the analysis models in BI solutions, it is not operationally or financially practical to expand the consulting exercise to cover the majority of information consumers. The resultant data store with the pre-defined business logic therefore has embedded answers only to the questions that the 20% of information consumers such as business analysts and senior management are expected to ask of the data using the BI tools.

At this time, organizations are looking to address the limitations of traditional reporting solutions using BI solutions. While the BI solution addresses the primary limitation of traditional reporting and provides unparalleled flexibility to the user in terms of manipulating data, it imposes significant barriers that make it an unviable proposition.

BI solutions introduce a significant level of usage complexity. Organizations that have tried to deploy BI to Information Consumers who use only traditional reporting today have discovered that users even after extensive training do not want to invest the extra effort it takes to get to information using BI tools.