One of the dirtiest unspoken secrets in business intelligence (BI) and
performance management (PM) is that most business people, despite the
sizable investment in BI, PM and data warehousing, are not getting the
information they need to make decisions. (See this Accenture study.)

And the reason for that, yet another unspoken truth, is that most business people are performing their analysis via data shadow systems or spreadmarts.

A quick recap: a data shadow system is an application built by the
business. It gathers data from many sources, and business people often
augment that data manually, using Microsoft Office for reporting and
analysis. Ask business people how they really get their information and
their answer is almost sure to include a data shadow system.

>>> Continue to the rest of Your 2008 Data Integration Plans, Part 2:Replacing your data shadow systems or spreadmarts