May 13, 2025 - We polled 1,000 senior leaders of privately held companies spanning industry sectors across the nation to take stock of actions, concerns, and challenges in key areas including business intelligence. Our 2025 Private Company Performance Report sheds light on the growth trends and challenges reported by our survey respondents.

Applied Business Intelligence Tools are Progressing

Eighty percent of our survey respondents feel their business systems are well-integrated and make decision-making easy, although financial services respondents disagree, with 33% reporting their systems operate in too many silos or are inaccurate and less actionable.

Only 25% of respondents have confidence in the accuracy and security of the critical business data. Fifty-six percent use pre-designed business intelligence (BI) data, 63% can create ad-hoc BI data without IT support, and 40% need IT support or manipulation in Excel to access this critical data.

Intelligent uses of data analytics are progressing for most. However, many are still learning to apply the news tools in smarter ways.

Data Analytics: Current Usage

The top three current uses of data analytics among respondents are to improve efficiency of product or service sourcing (63%), improve profitability of products (62%), and to better understand buyer behavior (59%).

Intelligent Applications In Action

The level of sophistication in applying business intelligence for forecasting, KPI tracking, product profitability, and more ranges from advanced to somewhat elementary. The good news is that 56% of respondents are actively using pre-designed business intelligence reports and 63% have dynamic ad hoc reports/visualizations with the capability to present data in multiple dimensions, allowing leadership to address changing business demands without IT assistance. While 4 in 10 need to request IT or vendor assistance for new data Insights, just as many use the old school practice of downloading data into Excel.

Nearly 40% of respondents indicate they are either using Excel or need the help of IT for reporting and 54% are still relying on ERP to generate business intelligence, leaving opportunity gaps for many in efficiency, accuracy, and agility. To close this gap, we are seeing strong interest in FP&A tools like Vena and operational intelligence tools like Power BI/Fabric that are empowering executives to be more autonomous in BI generation, now aided by AI.

The State of Data and Systems Quality (and Confidence)

Private company respondents are bullish about the integration of their business data and systems. Eighty percent say they get a unified view of business operations that allows for easy decision making. The balance is dealing with too many silos that need manual aggregation with data they believe is less actionable than it should be. The financial services respondents seem the least confident, with 1/3 reporting their systems operate in too many silos or are inaccurate and less actionable.

Regarding the accuracy and security of critical business data, one in five (21%) of respondents are concerned about the accuracy and security of critical business data. Fifty-four percent are confident in their data accuracy and security progress, leaving only 25% having fully realized complete data accuracy and security. This seems to be in conflict with 80% of respondents reporting a unified view of business operations.

While 80% of respondents have worked to automate data flows by integrating their systems, 75% have indicated there are inconsistencies in the results they are seeing. These two points denote the importance of a data warehousing strategy that transcends the integration layer. While it’s true that integrated systems are generally more efficient and accurate, the long-term work is in the normalization and rationalization of that data. Use of AI based tools and establishing a true data warehouse on a platform like Microsoft Fabric can promote more accuracy and consistency in the dataset.

Citrin Cooperman’s Private Company Performance Report

Citrin Cooperman has been serving and advising middle-market, private companies, and high net worth individuals for over 40 years and created an annual Private Company Performance Report to discuss what is top of mind for business leaders across the country. Access our report to discover valuable insights into the trends, opportunities, and challenges facing businesses today.

Access the 2025 Private Company Performance Report