There is growing evidence that more pervasive BI and analytics have a direct impact on competitiveness. Better decision making is more important when resources become restricted during a recession, so BI and analytics projects will still appeal to management. However, justifying large capital outlays for software will be challenging unless short-term benefits can be directly correlated with the investment. As more incremental projects are undertaken, it will be important to execute these projects within the long-term strategic plan of organization wide decision management. Read an active Q&A session with Dan Vesset, IDC Program Vice President of Business Analytics on building a successful enterprise BI strategy.