What's Next for BI & Experience Intelligence

As 2025 draws to a close, we wanted to share a consolidated wrap-up of what's changed in the Business Intelligence (BI), Experience Management (XM) and Incentive Management (IM) landscape and how BiTech Group has evolved this year to help our clients stay ahead of the curve.

2025 BI Market — Trends & Insights

The Business Intelligence (BI) market continues to accelerate as organisations increasingly recognise data as a strategic asset. But it's no longer enough to rely solely on traditional operational (O-Data) or financial metrics. 2025 Has confirmed what many analysts have long predicted: to win in today's environment, businesses must unify "what happened" with "how people felt about it."

This year also marked a major turning point in how organisations are beginning to adopt Artificial Intelligence (AI) inside their BI ecosystems. Many customers started experimenting with AI-assisted analytics (from natural-language querying to automated insights and predictive modelling) but quickly discovered that AI's real value isn't in replacing dashboards. Instead, it's in accelerating understanding, surfacing hidden connections and helping teams move from reactive reporting to proactive decision-making.

What we've seen across our client base is a shared learning curve. Businesses are learning that AI works best when it is grounded in strong data foundations, governed datasets and clearly defined business questions.

There's growing demand for integrated BI + Experience Management (XM) strategies. Companies are moving beyond siloed feedback or standalone transactional reporting. Seeking holistic intelligence that blends O-Data (sales, operations, performance) with X-Data (customer feedback, employee sentiment, experience metrics).

As AI becomes embedded in analytics workflows, this convergence becomes even more powerful. AI models can finally understand both the operational "signal" and the human "story" behind it.

Technology is enabling this shift. Platforms that support flexible data fabrics, real-time analytics, governance and AI-assisted insight generation are now mission-critical. We're seeing growing investment in architectures that allow AI to sit on top of governed and trusted data. Enabling organisations to automate answers to routine questions while enriching strategic decisions with deeper, more contextual intelligence.

What this means for clients: organisations that modernise their BI architecture now gain a competitive advantage not just in reporting faster but in learning faster. The next stage of BI isn't about more dashboards. It's about bringing AI, data and experience insights together so leaders can spot issues early, predict what's coming and make confident decisions.

What BiTech Group did in 2025

Throughout 2025, BiTech Group (BTG) worked closely with clients to navigate this shift. From strengthening core BI foundations to enabling experience intelligence, AI-assisted analytics and hybrid cloud architectures. Our focus has been on delivering practical, scalable outcomes that support real business decisions.

Our Key Deliverables & Impact:

XO Accelerator: Delivering Real Experience-Driven Intelligence

This year we invested heavily in promoting and expanding XO Accelerator not just as a "nice-to-have" add-on, but as a strategic enabler for enterprises aiming to bridge the divide between experience and operations. Core achievements include:

• Unified X-Data + O-Data architecture: XO Accelerator enables seamless integration of experience data (e.g. from survey platforms such as Qualtrics) with operational data. Giving organisations a true 360° view of both what customers/employees say and how the business is performing.

• Self-service analytics, without IT bottlenecks: By empowering business users to run reports, create dashboards and generate insights, organisations reduce their dependency on technical resources and accelerate decision cycles. XO Accelerator makes this possible by providing an intuitive, integrated platform that simplifies analytics and speeds up action.

• Modern analytics delivery, including integration with Power BI: In 2025, XO Accelerator made it easier to access data by connecting directly to Power BI, in addition to SAP Analytics Cloud. This lets users get ready-to-use, visually rich dashboards that combine experience and operational metrics.

• AI-powered analytics & data fabric architecture: The latest XO Accelerator release lets users ask questions in plain language using generative AI and work with flexible data models. This gives organisations more agility in analysis, reporting, and decision-making.

• Compliance and data governance enhancements: XO Accelerator now automatically archives or deletes survey data flagged as PII, helping organisations handle feedback data securely and meet privacy regulations.
  
  The result: clients using XO Accelerator have moved beyond static reports to a dynamic, integrated intelligence approach. This allows them to make faster, more relevant and action-oriented decisions on customer journeys, employee engagement and operational performance.

Embracing Next-Gen BI: Adoption of SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025

2025 brought a notable shift in the BI landscape. After years of messages pushing cloud-only analytics, many companies that had started or partially completed moving away from SAP BusinessObjects found that alternative platforms couldn't match the capabilities they depended on daily.

This included highly governed enterprise reporting, scheduled distribution at scale, pixel-perfect layout control, a mature semantic layer, robust row-level security and dependable operational reporting workflows. All areas where SAP BusinessObjects has been unmatched for decades.

At the same time, the vendor's own strategy evolved. SAP shifted from a "cloud-only" message to a hybrid analytics approach, reaffirming long-term on-premises support for SAP BusinessObjects well beyond 2030. This renewed commitment gave organisations confidence that SAP BusinessObjects remains a stable and strategic component of SAP's analytics roadmap.

As a result, we saw a strong trend emerge in 2025: customers returning to SAP BusinessObjects after realising that the platform continues to deliver essential, enterprise-grade reporting capabilities that cloud tools still struggle to replace. Particularly in regulated industries or environments that depend on precision and governance at scale.

BiTech Group supported numerous organisations in adopting and deploying SAP BusinessObjects BI 2025 and integrating SAP Data Cloud.

We helped clients migrate from older versions (4.2 / 4.3) and move from legacy universes (.UNV) to modern semantic models (.UNX). We also modernised their reporting pipelines across hybrid cloud environments.

The outcome: Organisations restored the reliable, governed reporting they rely on, while also preparing their BI foundations for future integration with cloud services, AI, SAP Data Cloud, Microsoft Fabric and broader data-fabric strategies. 

Thought Leadership & Market Influence

Throughout 2025, BiTech Group continued to publish forward-looking content and thought pieces helping shape market understanding of how XM + BI convergence is evolving. We wrote about how AI, data and trust are redefining customer and employee experiences.

We also tackled Incentive Management, exploring how 2025's evolving workforce dynamics, digital maturity and changing motivations call for smarter, data-driven incentive programs.