While my book, User Adoption Strategies: Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology focuses on the challenges of adoption with collaboration tools and approaches, recent research says the same challenges apply to business intelligence.

“Business analytics is atop most companies’ apps wish lists. The business goal, of course, is to make sense of the enormous amount of data and information housed in their servers—and stop making critical decisions from the gut.

“The combination of an increasingly complex world, the vast proliferation of data, and the pressing need to stay one step ahead of the competition has sharpened focus on using analytics within organizations,” notes a new study by IBM’s Institute for Business Value and MIT Sloan Management Review.

The problem, however, is that the adoption of analytics is being hindered not by technology but by age-old people problems: change management and cultural resistance.

Here are the top obstacles to widespread corporate adoption and use of analytics (up to three answers were accepted):
– 38% Lack of understanding of how to use analytics to improve the business
– 34% Lack of bandwidth due to competing priorities
– 28% Lack of skills internally in the line of business
– 23% Existing culture does not encourage sharing information.“

If you are facing this challenge, buy the book. It provides a user adoption framework and set of strategies to deal with these challenges.

Finally, one overall comment: user adoption (the people stuff) is ALWAYS the biggest barrier, never the technology. Let’s get over the “technology-solves-the-human-problem” belief; an intentional focus on user adoption is always critical.

Link: CIO.com, Biggest Barriers to Business Analytics Adoption: People, Not Tech.