7 Benefits of Business Intelligence for SMEs

Business intelligence was usually associated with big corporate businesses, in times when this process required vast human resources and expensive software and tech. Today business intelligence is brought to maximum automation and there are dozens of cheap and free BI software alternatives. Following latest trends that make BI available to small and medium enterprises, in this article we will explain the benefits, which use of business intelligence can bring to SME entrepreneurs.

Business Intelligence Trends

The use of business intelligence in small businesses is just a beginning of the automation process that will increase SMEs efficiency to the highest possible levels. Multinational corporate entities are already following billions of terabytes of data and using it for increasing their business advantage. Small businesses are on the same path, with the development of advanced big data solutions and wider availability of business intelligence software. Some of the main trends that will determine the future development in this field are:

1. Everyone will become a data analyst– business intelligence is becoming more customized for an average user.
2. Fast analysis is the key– In the corporate world where everybody use business intelligence, companies that pull out the right answers fast will have a significant advantage.
3. Data will become more visual– tools that allow us to turn data into great looking visuals are becoming more advanced and available.
4. Clouds are the new black– Most big data and business intelligence analysis will be done in a cloud environment.

In which fields can BI be used?

Theres wide variety of business fields, where business intelligence can be useful in. Most companies use it for:

• Marketing, sales, customer relations;
• ICT management;
• Human resources;
• SEO and web analytics;
• Financial analytics.

Benefits of Business Intelligence

Same as with bigger corporate entities, the list of benefits that BI brings to small and medium enterprises is very long. In this article we will only mention some of them:

1. Provides fast answers on critical questions– Business intelligence allows entrepreneurs to pull out useful information from unstructured data pools. It also enables them to quickly access their sales data, customer and contact lists and use it for answering critical business questions.
2. Empowering employees– BI enables companies to turn every employee into a decision maker. This benefit is especially important for small businesses that work with minimum human resources.
3. Saves time– BI software saves time employees used to spend on data entry and manipulation. Today, when business intelligence software does most of these boring tasks automatically, it leaves employees much more time to spend on more creative and more business-specific tasks.
4. Provides more accurate customer profiles– determining the character of a perfect buyer is one of the main tasks in conducting intelligent audience targeting. Since small businesses now have a chance to promote their services to a much wider audience, by using various online opportunities, BI intelligence software allows them to closely target their perfect buyers in order to increase their sales funnel conversion.
5. Identify cost-cutting areas– Small businesses usually operate with very limited funds, which sometimes requires smart budgeting and elaborate austerity measures. BI software helps entrepreneurs to plan their costs better, by improving companys finances transparency.
6. Its results are easier to understand– many business intelligence platforms come with advanced visual features that allow entrepreneurs to present survey results and general data in the form of colorful graphics, pie charts and other types of visuals that are much easier to understand than plain text.
7. It makes cooperation easier– business intelligence software comes with features that allow easy data export and sharing. This way all team members can easily access important company data and use it in real time.

Disadvantages of Business Intelligence

Implementation of business intelligence software to small businesses also comes with more than a few disadvantages.

1. It costs a lot– advanced BI software can cost a lot, and while big corporate entities can easily purchase them, obtaining the software can represent a huge investment for SMEs.
2. It sometimes requires hiring big data experts – one part of the overall business intelligence software costs covers additional hiring, which small business companies will need to organize if they want to use BI software in its full capacity. Regular employees can be trained for using BI for simple tasks, but advanced use of this software requires higher expertise.
3. Maintenance– most companies offer limited liability and maintenance for software they provide, which means that companies will need to pay for all further maintenance, patches and upgrades.

Although the use of business intelligence by SMEs comes with more than a few disadvantages, the introduction of BI software will soon become inevitable in both small and medium enterprises. Thats why entrepreneurs who realize these new trends first, will have significant advantage comparing to those that continue doing their business without using smart BI insights.