ABSTRACT: Lawson Abinanti evaluates the market positioning of 21 leading BI vendors and finds most fail to sufficiently differentiate their products or offer compelling value to customers.

A majority of leading Business Intelligence (BI) vendors must believe that the way they word their position makes it unique.

In my annual assessment of the positioning strategies of 21 of the leading BI vendors, six have different ways to express “decision making” as the theme for their position while eight claim various forms of “insights.”

For example, here are three ways these vendors describe the type of “decisions” they deliver:

• Tibco: Unlock the potential of your real-time data to make faster, smarter decisions
• Oracle BI: Make faster, more informed, and mobile-enabled decisions
• Pyramid Analytics: Faster, sharper decisions

Before we drill into whether these positions are unique because of the differences in the wording, let me share what I mean by a position. It is the mental space in your target audience’s mind that you can occupy with a benefit statement – repeated often over an extended period of time – that solves a pressing target audience problem. It’s in this mental space where your solution to the target audience’s pressing problem meet and form a meaningful relationship.

Your position needs to be unique and important – it solves one of the target’s most pressing problems – or the target audience won’t listen.

To determine BI vendors’ positions, I evaluated their websites – especially home pages – to determine the most obvious benefit statement and then shortened each one to capture the position plus clarifiers.

This assessment includes three perceptual maps that make it easy to see how BI vendors are positioned relative to their competitors. The first two present key wording of positions for “decisions” and “insights.” The last one includes all 21 vendors and my conclusions about differentiation in the BI market.

Here is how the “decision-making” position is expressed by these six vendors: (See figure 1.)

Figure 1. Marketing Positioning Statements about Decision Making

“Insights” are everywhere

“Insights” is used extensively by B2B marketers and product marketers in all markets, and not surprisingly, it is the most popular position in the BI market. Eight BI vendors claim various forms of “insights.” Here’s how they are expressed: (See figure 2.)

Figure 2. Market Positioning Statements about Insights

Does different wording differentiate?

If I were in charge of positioning for any of the companies claiming “insights” or “better decision making,” I’d change the position in a New York minute. I don’t care how clever or compelling the expression of the position is, it does not differentiate when the main concept/idea/claim is similar or the same as other competitors.

In addition to blending in with the crowd, BI companies making the same claim as competitors are causing buyer confusion. That’s because buyers are looking for reasons to make a quick decision, according to Neuromarketing, and differentiation helps them do it. Lack of differentiation results in longer sales cycles, price wars and no decisions. Maybe some BI vendors can relate!

But there is a more fundamental problem with claiming “insights” and “better decision making.” They aren’t benefits because when you test them by asking “so what?” you get a higher-level benefit. For example, asking “so what?” about “insights” might result in an answer like “gives you a competitive advantage.”

Ask “so what?” again and the answer might be “helps you be more profitable.” However, a “profitability” claim may not be believable, and therefore you’d drop back to the “competitive advantage” claim.

The BI competitive positioning landscape

Here is a perceptual map that makes it easy to see how all the BI vendors are positioned relative to each other with those claiming “insights” and “better decision making” lumped together respectively: (See figure 3.)

Figure 3. Market Positioning Statements of 21 BI Vendors

Not all differentiation claims matter to the buyer

In a crowded market like BI, differentiation is not easy, and even if you differentiate, it may not be a compelling position. That’s because it may not express a benefit that solves a pressing buyer problem. Examples are inwardly focused positions about a great product (MicroStrategy) or being No. 1 (MicroStrategy and Board (see “decision making” claims in the first perceptual map above)).

There are four criteria you can use to test a potential position before you go public. Your position needs to be:

1. Unique
2. Important to the buyer
3. Adapts to all marketing situations
4. Seems inherently true. It’s a believable claim.

It seems that YellowFin fails to meet at least one of the criteria. I find it hard to believe that YellowFin can transform a client’s business through software and data.

Differentiation isn’t dead in the BI market

In the “sea of sameness” several vendors stand above the crowd with unique positions, including Tableau (find easy answers to hard questions), Domo (unlock the value of your data) and Sisense (competitive advantage) to name a few.

Why did I include two positions for Tableau in the perceptual map? “Find easy answers to hard questions” is the headline on the home page. The first sentence of the main copy is “Tableau helps people see and understand data,” which is also Tableau’s mission statement. It was Tableau’s position for two years starting in 2015, and since then has been used prominently but not as the headline/main claim/position at the top of the home page.

That’s too bad because “see and understand data” is probably the strongest, most provable claim a BI vendor can make. Instead, Tableau seems to want to move away from it.

Tableau has changed its position three times from December 2020 to December 2021. That’s way too often!

It raises the question – how long should you maintain the same position? While it depends, the longer the better assuming it meets the four criteria mentioned earlier in this article. It takes time – at least 18 months and ideally much longer – and patience to claim a position and give it staying power. This assumes you tap into the power of consistency and repetition.

Ironically, a number of vendors claiming either “insights” or “better decision making” have been at it for several years if not longer. But the longer they stick with these positions, the longer they will blend in, and their marketing will fail to achieve its full potential.