Business Intelligence, or BI, is generally defined as ’applications and technologies for gathering, providing access to, and analyzing data for the purpose of helping enterprise users make better business decisions’.

Business Intelligence is one of the most popular areas in information technology today, with corporations spending millions of dollars on solutions from IT industry giants like Cognos, Oracle and IBM.

In today's business world, information is generally considered to be the second most important resource a company has, second only to its people. Businesses are more than even harnessing THE POWER OF INFORMATION.

But what does this all mean to smaller businesses who cannot afford multi-million dollar investments in technology?

In providing businesses with IT-related consulting and services for over 10 years, I have often been frustrated by the difficulty in convincing smaller companies of the immense value contained in the data generated by day-to-day operational systems.

While companies are willing to make significant investments in systems to manage operations, they are often far less willing to make the additional investment to tap into the valuable data generating by these systems.

The areas in which business intelligence can be used to improve the business decision-making process are almost endless. A few examples are:

• Employee performance measurement



• Customer buying behavior and trend analysis



• Customer demographics analysis



• Supplier performance measurement



• Sales forecasting



• Market share and competition analysis

The conclusions drawn from business intelligence outputs have the power to change the decision-making process from reactive to proactive, allowing your organization to become a market-leader, and even a visionary in your industry.

Business intelligence also expedites the decision-making process by providing the tangible evidence that results in quick buy-in from all involved parties. A nimble company that makes the right decisions more quickly than the competition will quickly become a market leader.

Customer satisfaction is also improved by a company's ability to identify and react to changing customer preferences and priorities in a timely manner.

Internal operations also benefit from the ability to quickly identify problems and apply the appropriate remedy to address the underlying causes.


Next Steps?

So does the deployment of business intelligence require a large investment in technology? For many companies, the answer to this question is No.

Organizations that have already implemented systems to manage functions such as accounting, operations, sales and human resources are already collecting a wealth of valuable information that can contribute to business intelligence. It is just a matter of adding the proper tools to access, analyze and report on this information, and determining the benchmarks and performance indicators that will garner the most value.

Business intelligence is one of the areas of IT where smaller businesses are often ignored by technology and software vendors. But this doesn't mean that smaller businesses cannot reap the rewards of business intelligence. A modest investment in order to exploit the reams of information generated by existing systems can provide your organization with the competitive advantage to rise above the competition.

Give us a call today at 416-977-1991 or email us at info@dataproforbusiness.com and let us help you find out how.


In Next Month's Issue...

Next month we will start to explore wireless technologies and how small companies can take advantage of them both affordably and effectively.