In the last two years, the software industry has witnessed a consolidation in the business intelligence (BI) market. In BI, enterprise technology conglomerates identified a strategic growth market and a great opportunity to upsell to their existing install base, primarily that of enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP). This consolidation has rendered sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors an alluring option for many organizations.

In order to explore the benefits and drawbacks of sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors, Ovum conducted a study of 100 SAP ERP customers from the US and Europe that have deployed BI and enterprise applications from SAP. The survey aimed to investigate whether or not these SAP customers experienced what sole-sourcing promised to deliver.

In this Podcast, Vuk Trifkovic, Senior Analyst at Ovum will discuss the survey findings:

• Although business managers are involved in the selection process, BI vendor selection is motivated by ease of procurement by the IT department stakeholders rather than the needs of the business users.
• While sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors promises tighter integration with transactional applications and IT procurement simplicity, the benefits are not resoundingly clear.
• Sole-sourcing BI from ERP vendors still requires too much effort on the part of IT to manage and operate a BI system while not empowering the business users through self-service.