BARC’s Survey of BI & Analytics Trends for 2025
In today's world, every business is a data business, reliant on complete, up-to-date insights to empower decision-makers in every team and department. Emerging trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics have changed the way end-users comprehend and manipulate the data at their disposal. Even so, organizations can't rely solely on cutting-edge trends to stay competitive and unlock the full potential of their data.
Despite the widespread adoption of new technologies and the fast pace of change across the corporate landscape, organizations of all sizes, industries, and geographies continue to invest most heavily in the foundational elements of BI and analytics.
BARC’s Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2025 highlights how global BI trends evolve over time, including which longstanding topics continue to lead the market and which new trends have emerged or strengthened their positioning in recent years.
This blog dives into the top three trends in BARC’s report and explains how organizations can integrate these and other leading trends into their BI strategies in the coming years.
#1 Data Security & Privacy
Why It Matters: Modern organizations produce and interact with copious amounts of data on a daily basis, much of which is confidential and critical to business operations. BARC defines data security as the protection of data against it being stolen, manipulated, or destroyed. 2025 was only the second year "Data Security & Privacy" has been included in the Trend Monitor, but it's claimed the number one spot on both occasions.
These results show that companies understand the inherent importance of keeping their data secure, but even so, they often struggle to find the time and resources to implement adequate protections.
By prioritizing data security and privacy, organizations can prevent threats such as cyberattacks, accidental breaches, and unauthorized access. Business leaders should invest in proactive measures to help prevent and respond quickly to threats as soon as they're detected. BARC recommends establishing a comprehensive security strategy and an emergency plan to detect attackers, restore data, and limit the damage caused by security breaches.
How to Prioritize It: Effective data security measures require a proactive approach to protecting your organization from potential threats. You should consider the potential consequences of a security breach and then put tailored tools and processes in place to secure your data at every touchpoint. For example, investing in a BI solution that offers customizable roles, rights, and access controls can help you ensure that only the necessary parties have access to sensitive data.
Beyond setting rules and restrictions throughout your tech stack, consider the value of training your employees on data privacy and security. Share information with your team about potential threats they may encounter and their pivotal role in keeping company data out of the wrong hands. Password best practices, cybersecurity training courses, and policies for safe data sharing help keep employees informed and promote consistent security practices at every level of your operations.
#2 Data Quality Management
Why It Matters: Data can only be used to shape decisions and strategies when it is reliable and comprehensive. Models can only make accurate predictions if they are trained and supplied with the correct data. High-quality data is also essential for helping organizations stay agile and building trust with business users.
"Data Quality Management" was the number one trend in BARC's report from 2021 to 2023 and came in at the number two spot in 2024 and 2025. This highlights its continued importance even as other trends like "Advanced analytics/ML/AI" and "Real-time analytics & streaming" have moved drastically throughout the ranks in the past five years.
The value of data quality management can be expressed in one simple statement: "input equals output." If an organization uploads outdated, inconsistent, or conflicting data into its BI tool of choice, it will be left with unreliable or incomplete reports that don't truly represent its performance. But if they take the necessary steps to clean up their data, maintain data throughout its entire lifecycle, and integrate every data source with their BI solution, they have the power to draw invaluable insights from their operational data.
How to Prioritize It: Before you can establish ongoing data management protocols, you'll need to identify and resolve the root causes of poor data quality, such as manual data entry, a lack of well-defined business processes, or clunky business system integrations.
Consider investing in a BI and analytics solution that directly connects to all of your operating systems and automates the import and export of data across them. These two steps will help you create a single source of data truth and reduce the risk of human error, like fat-fingering or data duplication.
Depending on your specific business practices and any quality concerns identified during your BI implementation, you can then develop an end-to-end data quality management strategy to help keep your data clean, consistent, and up-to-date.
#3 Data-Driven Culture
Why It Matters: "Data-Driven Culture" has maintained its place in the top five on BARC's Trend Monitor for the past five years, likely due to widespread corporate efforts to expand the use of data beyond a small group of technical experts and across the entire workforce.
Leading organizations recognize that data should be used broadly and incorporated into every part of their business. In this respect, being data-driven means consistently using data to inform decisions and shape processes. Accurate, high-quality data enables better decisions, increased efficiency, and flexibility — but only if end-users know how to easily access and digest the data most relevant to their roles.
To promote a data-driven culture, organizations must go beyond simply providing users with the right tools and technology. They also need to foster an environment where data is openly discussed and well-integrated with key tasks and processes. BARC's Data Culture Framework highlights six key elements of building a data-driven culture: data strategy, leadership, governance, literacy, communication, and access. By focusing on these interconnected areas, organizations can create a culture where data is not just available but actively used to drive innovation and business success.
How to Prioritize It: Your company's data-driven culture should be built on more than an aspirational goal and a robust set of analytics tools. To build a data-driven culture, prioritize data access, build trust amongst your employees, and encourage data-based decisions at every level of your operations. Beyond simply advocating for the use of data in various business practices, you should invest in:
- Data sharing and accessibility for various types of BI users
- Tools and business systems that scale with your business
- Multi-level training plans and user adoption strategies
- Buy-in from stakeholders, managers, and other business leaders
See All the Trends for 2025
BARC’s Trend Monitor evaluates the top 20 global BI and analytics trends through the eyes of BI users, consultants, and vendors.
Download the complete Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2025 to explore all of the top BI trends and discover six key recommendations for integrating them into your own operations.
Source: Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2025, Ó 2024 BARC
