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Small Businesses and Business Intelligence – Making Better Decisions in the Corporate Environment

Melissa Thompson

For many, business intelligence is an abstract concept. This is one of the main reasons for which many small business owners aren’t familiar with the concept or how it might benefit their enterprises. While some are thrilled at the prospect of investing in such technologies, they remain a bit ignorant regarding their true potential. What is BI, truly? Well, it consists of a series of tools that help organizations improve decision-making capabilities by keeping track, process, organize store and analyze data, and transforming it into insights. This helps enterprises adjust their strategies and make the right decisions at the right time, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. The paragraphs below will help you understand better why BI tools are mandatory in today’s business environment.

Does my company need BI?

Some may be tempted to think that in small businesses’ case BI tools are unnecessary, but there is no difference when companies are faced with processing large volumes of data. Whether your company is small or a big corporation, chances are, you will benefit from BI tools. The thing is, if you don’t process carefully and purposefully that data your company may be storing, you have no chances to take advantage of it, fully. Poorly managed, that data can, in fact, become a huge burden on the company. Smart BI solutions are optimized and automated and this helps companies make the most out of that data, create strategies and become more profitable. Smooth processes, bigger capabilities, these all come with business intelligence tools such as partner data exchange tools, and even relatively small companies should invest in such products.

SMEs have three times more chances to invest in new BI solutions

Enough with the “my company is too small for BI” philosophy! A Dresner Advisory Services report from 2017 claims that small businesses are more likely to make decisions regarding BI integration than they larger fellow companies. Large enterprises have by 20% less BI solutions. This, combined with a large number of employees and clients makes them remain behind, unlike their smaller business fellows, which are more inclined to invest in cutting-edge technologies to help them grow and make better decisions in their processes and activity. SMEs are more reliant on these technologies than we might be tempted to think.

SMEs have a more aggressive approach when it comes to BI

When planning for their BI adoption and implementation, these companies think ahead with 12, 24 or even 36 months. This helps them grow their businesses to unexpected levels, unlike their bigger competitors, which might remain a bit behind. Companies with less than 100 employees mainly focus on business intelligence solutions, finding new and viable ones and implementing those at a large scale in their companies.

While in the past cutting-edge BI solutions were the primary focus of large companies, smaller enterprises seem to be the leaders currently when it comes to implementing those for growth and development purposes.