Why should SMEs use Business Intelligence?

  • 26 May 2014
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There is a common belief amongst everyone that Business intelligence tools are extremely sophisticated, complicated and expensive. This belief may lead to another wrong notion that business intelligence is affordable and meant only for managing bulk data in large scale industries. Through this post, we will be busting this myth of business intelligence being useful only to the large scale industries and not the small scale ones. We will talk of four reasons why even the small and medium scale industries should explore the field of business intelligence tools and opt for actions like QlikView implementation.

1.    Business Intelligence can be used by anyone and everyone

Business intelligence is designed for all industries, irrespective of its size and specialization. The sophistication and complexity doesn’t restrict it to the companies that are beyond a particular size and strength. Business Intelligence is used to collect relevant data that would enable you to take better and informed decisions, actions and enhance your company’s performance. Analyzing data, gaining relevant insights and predicting future trends based on the available information is something that every industry can use, especially, the SMEs so that they get an edge over their larger competitors. Business intelligence helps with automating and simplifying a lot of processes. This is something that every industry should take full advantage of, irrespective of its size.

2.    It is inexpensive and simple to implement and use BI solutions

It is believed that implementing business intelligence solutions is really complex. It was true a few years back, but it is not the case anymore. In the past, only a dedicated IT department implement & used it to an additional cost. Therefore, SMEs stayed away from it as most couldn’t afford to shell the extra money. Thankfully, the scenario has changed drastically in favour of SMEs. Since business intelligence applications are mostly cloud based, business intelligence solutions have become really affordable without any need for additional hardware and IT team support. For example, QlikView services are really easy to implement and is a really good options for the SMEs.

3.    Business Intelligence helps SMEs to compete with the big players

Competition isn’t lenient to anyone. Being a small industry isn’t an excuse for lower performance than the large industries. To survive and sustain in the extremely competitive world, one should make an effort to make use of everything that can provide them that edge. Business intelligence solutions help SMEs bridge that gap that is present between them and the large industries. SMEs can access data, manage them, understand trends and make optimum use of the data with the help of BI tools, something that wasn’t possible for them in the past. Now, SMEs can be on equal competitive grounds as their larger competitors.

4.    BI helps to convert your data into indispensible business asset

The importance of managing large data has been established quite a few times. But just having large data isn’t a reason enough to have business intelligence. Collating the data, joining multiple sets of sets and analysing the data will provide the answers to most questions about the way your company is performing. The importance of data is growing with the day and this very data holds tremendous value to your business and undeniably is indispensible for you.

The penetration of BI solutions within small and medium scale industries is on a rise and that is definitely good news for the competition and the customers alike. The competition compels everyone to do better than others, offer something that the other one cannot, drive the companies to be flexible enough to accommodate the constantly changing customer needs and demands. QlikView implementation has the ability to make your company more agile, respond quicker and better to the uncovered insights and proves to be an advantage over larger organizations. If you are an SME, then don’t think twice about making business intelligence a part of your organization.

Nidhi Batra

About the author

Nidhi Batra is a marketing and brand communication professional with 10 years of experience working in the dynamic B2B marketing environment. She strategizes, writes, reviews a variety of content for demand generation and sales support activities. Having a Master’s in English from Delhi University, she knows how to navigate her readers on insightful journeys with her SAP published blogs and thought leadership content.