Already know everything about BARC Scores?
Prove your status in the market
As a marketer, one of your most important jobs is to prove that yours is the best solution on the market and that you outperform your competitors. This can be a challenge – after all, wouldn’t every vendor claim that their product is the best?
This is where BARC Score comes into play: As a buyer of the marketing rights to BARC Score, you can convince potential new customers with a recommendation from BARC’s independent and trusted market analysts.
With just one look at the score graphic, customers or prospects can immediately identify your company’s position in the market.
In addition, the accompanying BARC Score document illustrates the advantages of your product.
What’s more, the BARC badge serves as a seal of quality that we, as an independent industry analyst and consulting firm, will award you.
How BARC Scores help you
Generate leads
BARC Score is an excellent tool for lead generation. As a sponsor you can distribute this high-quality content on your website for download.
Convince your visitors
Publicize your positioning in BARC's renowned market assessment to convert leads. Prove your status in the market and convince potential new customers of the advantages of your solutions.
Level-up your content
Fuel your content channels through blogs or posts based on BARC Score materials. Attract readers who are looking for new software.
Create awareness
Create awareness among customers, press, partners and investors. Position yourself as a relevant provider and thought leader.
Support your sales team
BARC Score serves as a well-founded sales argument that your customers can trust. What could be more powerful than a recommendation from a respected, independent market analyst?
Gain insights
Receive exclusive detailed results and special assessments relating to your specific questions.
Reach
Publication on our websites
Publication on the BARC website and bi-survey.com, with traffic of more than 250,000 users in the last 12 months.
BARC newsletter
Teaser in the BARC newsletter to approximately 10,000 subscribers
Press release
We inform specialized journalists about the publication of each BARC Score
Social media
Social media posts with details of the results on LinkedIn.
BARC events
Presentation and marketing of BARC Scores at BARC events and conferences such as Digital Finance & Controlling, Big Data & AI World and the DATA festival.
Consulting & workshops
We make use of Score results in BARC consulting projects and workshops.
BARC Guide
Advertising and editorial article in the BARC Guide, the place where every software selection in the German-speaking region begins.
Criteria of the dimension “Portfolio Capabilities” are for example “Product Strategy” or “Marketing Strategy”.
Criteria of the dimension “Portfolio Capabilities” are for example “Interfaces and supported File Formats” or “Automation type and Monitoring”.
BARC Score categorizes vendors into five regions: Entrants, Specialists, Challengers, Market Leaders and Dominators.
We develop BARC Scores for different selected topics and update them every year.
About
What is BARC Score?
BARC Scores are generic, criteria-based rankings of vendors. Each vendor is evaluated based on a set of detailed criteria. A vendor’s score is plotted on two dimensions: “Portfolio Capabilities” and “Market Execution”. The result is a categorization of vendors into five segments: Entrants, Specialists, Challengers, Market Leaders and Dominators.
BARC Scores are developed by our analysts for selected software segments and are renewed yearly. This makes them an indispensable overview for decision-makers who are looking for new software vendors in a specific application field.
Topics & Publication
Which software segments do BARC Scores cover?
The evaluation and classification of business software and its vendors is usually a time-consuming process for end-user companies. With BARC Scores, BARC is breaking new ground by combining detailed analyst knowledge with extensive survey results to create a graph that is unique in the market and yet provides clear information about a manufacturer’s current market position and portfolio.
Each BARC Score highlights a specific market segment in detail and helps our customers to create long and short lists for their software selection projects.
BARC analysts select the products for each Score based on clearly defined criteria. Click on the Score names below to see which inclusion criteria apply to which Score.
BARC Score Data Intelligence Platforms (Global)
Publication: February 2025
Vendor qualification criteria:
- Total revenue for the data intelligence solution must be >$5M (at least ≥$2.5M in both Europe and North America).
Offices in all regions (North America, Europe, APAC). - At its core, the solution must be capable of managing various types of metadata; provide data catalog, business glossary and data governance capabilities; and support data collaboration.
- Self-learning: The product must provide self-learning capabilities (e.g., to support extraction, classification, linking and analysis of metadata).
- The product can be used standalone or licensed separately from the vendor’s platform.
BARC Score Financial Performance Management (Global / DACH)
Publication: March 2025
Vendor qualification criteria:
- Strong focus on functionality for financial performance management processes (e.g., financial planning, financial consolidation)
- Additional functionality for at least four out of these five technologies: financial planning, financial consolidation, operational planning & forecasting, reporting and analysis
- Global edition: Minimum of EUR 25 million in (software) revenue per year with the evaluated product portfolio with significant business in Europe and additional geographies worldwide
- DACH edition: Minimum of EUR 25 million in (software) revenue per year with the evaluated product portfolio with significant business in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
- Not merely focused on single industries or use cases
BARC Score Integrated Planning and Analytics (Global / DACH)
Publication: March 2025
Vendor qualification criteria:
- Functionality and support for all steps of planning processes
- Functionality for formatted reporting, ad hoc query and reporting, analysis and dashboards
- Global edition: Minimum of EUR 25 million in (software) revenue per year with the evaluated product portfolio with significant business in Europe and additional geographies worldwide
- DACH edition: Minimum of EUR 25 million in (software) revenue per year with the evaluated product portfolio with significant business in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
- Not merely focused on single industries or use cases
BARC Score Enterprise BI and Analytics Platforms (Global)
Publication: June 2025
Vendor qualification criteria:
- Has tools for formatted reports, dashboards, analysis, advanced analytics as well as self-service BI & analytics (four of these five categories must be supported)
- Has revenues of at least 15 Million Euro (software licenses and maintenance) worldwide; with significant business in at least two areas of the world
- Not merely focused on single industries or use cases
Marketing rights
By purchasing marketing rights, you will get the distribution rights to
- … the BARC Score graphic
- … the accompanying BARC Score document
- … the badge
Additional service
Add-on
Strategy workshop
…to analyze the results
Price on request