Smaller business managers probably have a perception that Business Intelliegence (B.I.) is just for major enterprises, possibly being aware that a B.I. implementation in a large corporation can take months, and that it’s rarely an inexpensive undertaking – even by the financial standards of the “major enterprise”
But that doesn’t mean the “Small to Medium sized Enterprises” (SMEs) can’t benefit from B.I., and it doesn’t mean SME businesses have to spend anything like as much time or money as the huge companies do. Indeed, trying to bring a large‐scale, traditional B.I. solution into an SME environment isn’t going to work any more than bringing a multi-factory/multi-warehouse enterprise resource planning package into an SME would.
Neverthless just as with the larger organisations, SMEs will have lots of potentially useful data living in transaction-based business applications and these could really benefit from “B.I. Style” reporting and analysis. The difference is that their data is created and managed via less‐expensive, easier‐to‐implement and probably off-the-shelf solutions for common needs - payroll, corporate book keeping, and customer relationship management; even bespoke smaller business systems are today based on an “open” SQL database rather than the “closed” proprietary databases common when B.I. started to emerge.
With current B.I. evolution it doesn’t need to be any different. Particularly with the evolution of hardware power, but also of B.I. itself towards much more agile and much smarter B.I. systems this more “package” solution approach can now apply to this area of B.I..
What SMEs need, and can now achieve, is a B.I. system that does not assume the lengthy implementation times generated by the huge company complete with it’s huge and disparate set of bespoke databases, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), payroll, etc. systems. Not having that enormous and varied collection of databases that characterise traditional B.I. usage, midsize companies are able to take advantage of a more prepackaged solution that is less expensive and much easier to implement.
Smaller Business - Better RoI
In fact, you can make an argument that midsize companies are able to achieve a quicker, better return on a B.I. investment than large companies. After all, large companies can be slow to change, even when they’ve got good intelligence, smart decisions, and a good plan. Even with a fully‐implemented B.I. system, large companies often take longer to implement the decisions that their B.I. leads them to. Midsize companies, in contrast, can often react more quickly to change if only because fewer people are involved in decision making.
With the right B.I. solution, a midsize company can today easily develop a solid B.I. system, make smart decisions about the company’s future, and act on those decisions more rapidly—meaning a faster RoI from that B.I. solution.
Business Intelligence in the Smaller Organisation