Companies Increasingly Look To BI For Competitive Edge

Despite budgetary pressures in the downturn, more and more SMB businesses are turning to Business Intelligence (BI) software in an attempt to gain a competitive edge, says a report from research firm Access Markets International (AMI) Partners.

BI is an analytic tool that provides decision makers with real-time financial and operating models to track business performance and return on investment (ROI).

AMI concluded current market conditions are driving 600,000 small and medium businesses (9 percent of PC owners) to deploy business intelligence software this year.

The research firm classifies BI software as a growth category due to the piggyback feature employed by continual adoption and investment in ERP/CRM systems. As adoption of ERP/CRM informational systems grow, AMI predicts the need to derive business insights will become crucial to day-to-day business operations.

But the study found BI as a module tool is beginning to give way to a standalone BI collaborative system. The latter offers integration of current databases while generating intelligent reports aimed towards revenue generation and research and development of new business. According to AMI`s SMB Quarterly Pulse Tracker, nearly half of all US small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) will be or plan to be using business intelligence software in the next three to six months.

“BI products focus on mature companies that already have an enterprise/customer management system in place, which makes it easier to add BI as an overlay on your relational management system,” said Nichelle McKenzie, a research analyst at AMI-Partners.

McKenzie said companies that utilise BI software benefit from data integration across their businesses and delivering self-service reporting and analysis, thus IT pros spend less time responding to requests and business users spend less time looking for information.

Earlier this year, technology research firm Gartner predicted by 2012, business units will control at least 40 percent of the total budget for BI and by 2010, 20 percent of organisations will have an industry-specific analytic application delivered via SaaS as a standard component of their BI portfolio.

Gartner analysts projected business units will increase spending on packaged analytic applications, including corporate performance management (CPM), online marketing analytics and predictive analytics that optimise processes, not just report on them. The report also noted social networking analysis shows the value of BI by tying the dimensions and measures to decisions made in the company.