In the past four years, organizations have maintained data management and business intelligence (DMBI) head count at about 5.4% of the IT staff. However, our latest data shows a significant increase. Traditionally, productivity gains from cloud-based business analysis and reporting tools mitigated the need for more staff. But there is a new business focus.
As shown in Figure 1 from our full report, Data Management and Business Intelligence Staffing Ratios, this function now represents 8.0% of the IT staff, up from 5.1% in 2023. This surge indicates a renewed strategic focus on extracting value from data, contrasting with earlier periods of cloud-based analytics. Businesses are relying more on data-driven strategic decisions to maintain a competitive edge, and the demand for actionable insights is skyrocketing.
The relentless growth in data volume now creates a critical balance. While sophisticated technologies such as AI, machine learning, and cloud governance tools boost efficiency, the sheer scale of information demands a corresponding increase in human expertise or technological capability to effectively understand, organize, and categorize it.
We define the data management and business intelligence staff as those individuals who design, develop, architect, and model data schemes and databases for the organization. They may also design the organization’s data warehouse and analytics systems and analyze information maintained by such systems. This category does not include database administrators, who go in the database administration category.
“As AI continues to generate data and demands specialized skills, organizations must adopt a dual DMBI staffing strategy,” said Asif Cassim, principal analyst for Avasant Research, based in Los Angeles. “This involves upskilling existing teams while hiring niche experts like data scientists and AI ethicists to translate complex AI insights into business value.”
Regardless of company size, nearly every industry faces exponentially growing data volumes. For example, healthcare is awash in patient data from digital records and telehealth systems, retail is driven by hyperpersonalized omnichannel commerce, and utility companies are collecting vast amounts of data from smart meters. Effectively managing this explosion of data, however, is not solely about adding staff; it relies heavily on having the proper architectural and infrastructural investments in place to ensure DMBI support can scale and maintain a competitive edge.
To examine this important IT staffing function, the full report uses four benchmarks to assess data management staffing levels: DMBI staff as a percentage of the IT staff, DMBI staff as a percentage of the Application Group, users per DMBI staff member, and applications per DMBI staff member.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of our report on this subject, Data Management and Business Intelligence Staffing Ratios. The full report is available at no charge for subscribers.