What separates best-in-class data teams from the rest? Data Warehouse & Data Vault Adoption Trends

A joint study by BARC and Eckerson Group surveyed 238 data and analytics practitioners across Europe and North America. The findings reveal a clear gap between leaders and laggards — and exactly what the best teams do differently.

  • 238 Practitioners surveyed
  • 79% Still rely on a data warehouse
  • 62% Plan to increase data vault usage
  • 91% Best-in-class plan to expand data vault

What the research found

  • Data quality is the #1 challenge

    50% of respondents rank poor data quality as their biggest challenge — followed by dependence on a few experts (49%) and lack of automation (37%). The problems are chronic and well-known.

  • 58% plan to improve data quality

    The top modernisation priority for the next 3 years. Closely followed by automating manual steps (55%) and updating business logic (44%).

  • The data warehouse is not going away

    79% of organizations still use a data warehouse. 82% have multiple architecture types. The data warehouse remains the mission-critical layer — and it needs to be automated.

  • Best-in-class automate with commercial tools

    62% of best-in-class companies use commercial tools for automation vs. just 24% of laggards. Automation is the clearest differentiator between leaders and the rest.

  • Data vault: growing among best-in-class

    34% of best-in-class companies use the data vault vs. 15% of laggards. The data vault is chosen for extensibility (53%), scalability (40%), and flexible architecture (35%).

  • Training gap holds teams back

    Only 65% of data vault adopters have been trained on the 2.0 solution. 60% only partially adhere to standards — often because they simply haven’t been trained.

Three recommendations from the report

  • Double down on data quality

    Inaccurate, duplicative, and delayed data still plagues most analytics environments. Reduce silos and implement commercial tools to monitor data quality.

  • Automate with commercial tools

    Best-in-class companies use commercial automation tools that help them standardise, streamline, and repeat data management tasks — instead of maintaining homegrown scripts.

  • Learn from best-in-class data vault adoption

    Study how best-in-class adopters selected the data vault, trained their teams on the 2.0 solution, and plan to expand its footprint. 91% of them intend to increase its role.

Download the Full Report

27-page research report by BARC and Eckerson Group. 238 practitioners surveyed. No vendor spin — just the data.

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Matt Collett

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