When we analysed the top 24 vendors within the Gartner MQ for BI Platform providers earlier in the year we found it hard to see one that stood out. This theme continues when we looked at what the vendors said about the benefits their platforms provided.
What we found was 2 central take-outs:
- Over 80% of vendors all claim the same set of common benefits, the top 6 are below but these were closely followed by a list of others commonly used
- And rather than focusing on central benefits, the majority took an approach of listing every possible benefit in what felt like a hit and hope approach.
The facts, common benefits used by vendors:
- 63% – Speed of deployment, data access and results
- 59% – Analytics power and predictive capabilities
- 50% – Ease of user experience, search capabilities and functionality
- 50% – Scalability
- 46% – Data visualization and dashboard capabilities
- 42% – Access anywhere and on any device
For the customer, it’s hard to see the difference between vendors and really understand the facts.
As a vendor, to win the argument in this space you would need to validate “why” above all others that your solution can be:
- Quicker
- More powerful
- Simpler to use
- More scalable
There is an alternative open… and that’s to find a new position to build a claim around and defend. For example, no vendor currently states clearly why and how they can deliver these benefits better than others – they simply don’t try to link them. We believe it’s worth considering as a competitive advantage.
This article is based on a competitive analysis study of the Gartner Magic Quadrant BI Platform Providers 2017. An Executive Summary of the study is available at here.
