BI Vendor Categories

The Business Intelligence Industry, like all others, is made up of vendors that provide products, services, or combinations of both. Each of these vendors offers value in a unique way. This blog categorized BI vendors into one of three categories from a value added perspective.

Software Sales
Companies that off software products as their primary line of business fall into the software vendor category. Software vendors can be further categorized by the type of product being offered. Database vendors include Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc... Front-end vendors include Panorama, Qliktech, Cognos, etc… Software sales BI vendors produce raw software packages that buyers then installs, configures, and customizes to meet their needs. Some software sales companies are offering their product in software-as-a-service format as a low cost alternative.

Packaged Products
A second group of BI vendors provide customized software packages which deliver focused functionality to a particular client group. Many times packaged product vendors build their products on top of software sales vendor products. Software such as enterprise resource planning often falls into this category. Customer relationship management may also fall into this category. Oracle Hyperion and SAP BPC will also fall into this category. All of these products provide clients with a solution to a specific problem as opposed to a software sales product. For example, a database is an tool that client use to build a solution while a CRM package provides a solution for the clients specific need. Some packaged product vendors offer their product in the software-as-a-service format.

Body Shops
Finally, a third category of BI vendors provide services as their primary offering. These companies are hired by their clients to consult, design, build, modify, maintain, etc BI software for their client’s needs on a custom basis. While software sales and packaged product vendors typically offer services to their client, this is a secondary line of business for these vendors. Body shops provide these services as their primary line of business. Many times partnerships will exist between body shops and software sales vendors providing software sales vendors the ability to focus on their core product (software) while body shops specialize in a particular software segments.

Each of these three categories of BI vendors attempt to add value in a very unique way. It will be the topic of future blogs to discuss the pros and cons of each category’s approach.