Next-Generation Business Intelligence Platforms

Short Summary

KuppingerCole’s Buyer’s Compass for Next-Generation BI Platforms is designed to streamline vendor selection by focusing RFI/RFP efforts on the most decision-relevant criteria rather than serving as a complete vendor-selection handbook. It guides organizations to identify primary BI use cases, weight functional and non-functional criteria accordingly, request and score vendor information, ask targeted follow-up questions, and produce a shortlist for deeper evaluation via detailed RFIs and proofs of concept (PoCs). The approach also emphasizes confirming that required technical and organizational prerequisites are in place to avoid failure due to readiness gaps rather than product shortcomings.

The report distinguishes next-generation BI from traditional BI by its future-oriented response to major shifts: growing BI adoption by SMEs, broader employee participation in data-driven decisions, rapidly increasing data volumes, accessible cloud scalability, and modern architectures that blend real-time insight with action in the same interface. These platforms aim to increase both the volume of analyzable data and the degree of business-user control, often via AI/ML that supports data preparation, insight generation, and governance-aware operation.

Core use cases include de-siloed insights across departments, embedded analytics inside business applications, scalable organization-wide BI, augmented analytics with AI/ML (including forecasting and natural language querying), and advanced reporting including pixel-perfect outputs. Selection criteria span capabilities such as advanced and operational analytics, NLP support, visualization and reporting features, automation, data preparation, provenance and quality controls, privacy protection, explainability, bias mitigation, drift monitoring, low/no-code usability, ML toolkit integration, and APIs for operational embedding. Non-functional criteria address deployment models, vendor scale and customer base, partner and technology ecosystems, strategic AI/ML focus, support quality, roadmap transparency, compliance alignment, and pricing models.

Interesting Facts

• The Buyer’s Compass is intended to streamline product selection during an RFI/RFP cycle rather than serve as a complete vendor-selection guideline.
• Recommended selection steps include identifying use cases, weighting criteria, rating vendors, asking additional questions, and shortlisting for RFIs and PoCs.
• Next-generation BI platforms are characterized as responding to increased SME BI investment, broader employee data use, growing data volumes, cloud scalability, and real-time architectures.
• Top use cases include de-siloed insights, embedded analytics, scalable BI, augmented analytics, and reporting.
• Functional criteria include capabilities spanning analytics types, NLP support, visualization, reporting and distribution, data preparation, governance controls, AI/ML oversight, low/no-code, ML toolkit integration, and APIs.
• Non-functional criteria include deployment models, vendor size, number of customers, partner ecosystem, AI/ML strategic focus, technology ecosystem, support, roadmap, compliance coverage, and pricing.
• The matrix rates operational analytics as low priority for de-siloed insights and scalable BI, and high priority for augmented analytics.
• The matrix rates low/no-code as high priority for de-siloed insights, embedded analytics, and scalable BI, and low priority for augmented analytics.
• Technical prerequisites listed include data governance, iterative cybersecurity processes, monitoring and evaluation, scalability, and a defined deployment roadmap.
• Organizational prerequisites listed include IT governance, project ownership, quantifying business value, training, and an incident response team.

Notable Quotes

• “This document is not a complete guideline for selecting vendors but should provide an excellent starting point to streamline the decision-making process.”
• “There should be a line drawn between the next-generation BI platform market segment and a traditional BI platform.”
• “Data generation and usage has exponentially increased within the business, from SMEs to multinational enterprises.”
• “The next generation of BI platforms will expand on the volume of data analysis and the degree of control that a business user has over the process.”
• “Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities will likely provide this.”
• “Dashboards assist departments and teams to make data-driven decisions.”
• “Or action workflows can be integrated directly into dashboards, meaning decisions can be made when exploring insights.”
• “Modern BI is effective largely due to its ability to deliver insights visually.”
• “BI platforms quickly become a relied-upon source of information for critical business decisions.”
• “Some companies may struggle with these criteria, not because of technical weaknesses and wrong products, but because of a lack of organizational maturity.”