Advantages of Business Intelligence Solutions for Small Businesses

Business competition is getting stiffer every day. You cannot afford to lower your guard lest you lag behind and you allow your competitors to pull your market share under your feet without you knowing it.  IT (Information Technology) solutions like CRM (Customer Relations Management) and other BI (Business Intelligence) platforms are now indispensable to business operations.  Most business processes today need the support of reliable IT infrastructures.  More so, the large volumes of customer, product and services, finance, operations and other crucial business data need to be safely guarded and accessible at moments need. This is the scenario. Nevertheless, how do you organize these things? How do you use them to your business’ competitive advantage? Necessary business information at the behest of your finger tips are still difficult to obtain when need them most.

Overhauling existing data warehouse management and building new IT infrastructures is very costly, especially in a recession like this. The new approach to BI is assessing completely your current systems and business processes, and then integrating the appropriate BI solution.  This is also known as complementary business intelligence approach. It is easier, faster, and cost effective to implement. Meaning, roll-out can be scheduled within 6 to 10 weeks, priorities are targeted to the most critical aspects of your business that generates most value,  existing IT infrastructure will be used (less investment), and lastly you do not need to boost your current personnel to implement it.

Other than these, what are the advantages gained from a properly implemented business intelligence solution? Here are few that come to mind:

1. Accurate sensing of customers’ needs and requirements
   
2. JIT (Just in Time) responsiveness to customers’ needs and demands
   
3. Ability to adopt and adopt to any market changes or shifts, including economic recessions
   
4. Streamlined business processes which results to a cost-effective business operation
   
5. Zero wastage
   
6. Accurate business and sales forecasting
   

A good BI does not only provide the ability to monitor the performance and operation of the business, but it should also help business managers and owners develop competitive business strategies based on accurate and timely information. After all, business decisions that have a lot of bearing on any business’ fate have to be accurate and on time.