The first half of this report will examine data from the survey that TDWI conducted. The second half will use systems theory to explain the dynamics of BI deployments that either accelerate or decrease usage and examine the key leverage points that organizations can use to reverse a downward cycle of usage.

The key to making BI pervasive is getting users to adopt and use the BI tools that an organization purchases for them. This seemingly straightforward statement is actually very complex given all the variables that go into making a BI tool easy to use. This is why the penetration of active BI users in organizations is only 24%.

A good portion of this report focuses on the different information needs of power users and casual users. Power users are generally business analysts who spend a great deal of time accessing and analyzing information and create a majority of the ad hoc reports within an organization; they are savvy with software tools and familiar with the applications and databases used to populate reports. Casual users, on the other hand, are generally executives, managers, and staff workers who primarily consume reports created by others and are not interested in learning the details of how BI tools or databases work.