Narrative Science (www.narrativescience.com), which specializes in Natural Language Generation (NLG) for the enterprise, has released its 2018 State of Business Intelligence (BI) Reporting research report, which highlights the challenges and opportunities in current data analysis and reporting processes facing businesses.

The research report surveyed hundreds of BI report authors, BI administrators, and business decision-makers, unveiling the following findings on why adoption remains low:

° It’s too time-consuming:

° Almost two thirds of analysts surveyed responded that more than half of their weekly activities are dedicated to manual reporting tasks;

° There’s not enough context:
° A majority of business decision-makers cite their biggest pain point is that reports include “what” happened but lack explanations on the “why.” Excel ranks as the primary way this group receives data-driven information;

° It needs to be automated:

° Analysts say “high depth of analysis,” or the ability to go beyond descriptive analytics, is the most important value criteria that would need to be included if given the ability to fully automate BI reporting.

“The report confirms what we’ve been hearing from our customers and partners: that business literate individuals don’t need to be data literate—they need timely, relevant, and intuitive information so they can do their jobs better,” Nick Beil, chief operating Officer at Narrative Science, says.