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As an SMB owner, what are the top things I should consider before purchasing a BI/analytics product?
I'm considering implementing an analytics program at my small manufacturing company to help with forecasting and reporting. As an SMB owner, what are the top things I should consider before making this investment?
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2 Answers
Something you should really take into consideration is whether the application you choose is run in the cloud or not.
While larger organizations and government agencies are busy sorting out security, privacy, compliance and control issues, the decision to go cloud for small businesses is an easy one. In many cases they cannot justify or afford the large CapEx of traditional IT. They also typically have less existing infrastructure, less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and smaller capital budgets for purchasing in-house technology. Similarly, SMBs in emerging markets are typically unburdened by established legacy infrastructures, thus reducing the complexity of deploying cloud solutions.
Without the opportunities available in the cloud, most SMBs would have to go without core enterprise systems such as CRM, ERP, calendar sharing, e-mail, and even business intelligence. But what they have come to realize early on, is that all of these can be enjoyed out of the cloud for a few dollars a day.
What’s more, the increasing availability of clouds have opened opportunities for small technology-oriented startups to rent virtual data centers and avoid the huge investment needed to purchase hardware, software, and rent data center space. A million dollars used to be the minimum for a start-up to prepare for its development… With the options in cloud computing today, that money can be put to better use elsewhere.
Of course this is just one of many things you could consider but in my opinion is a pretty important one.
Hi Brendon,
SMBs usually have complex requirements, but tight budgets and limited IT staff with BI expertise. So I would think about the following:
1. What am I trying to accomplish? Who will be using this information?
Are you just doing sales forecasting? Do you just need reporting, or do you need a data warehouse and analysis? Or are you looking for a very broad business intelligence solution that can meet the needs of multiple constituents at your organization?
2. Where is my data and how clean is it?
Do you need to tie data together from multiple systems, such as ERP, CRM, and accounting? Or do you only have one, clean data source?
3. How much money do I have to spend, both for upfront and ongoing costs?
4. How many people resources do I have for this?
Do I have a BI expert on staff who can build and maintain this? Or would a solution implemented and maintained by someone else be better?
5. What will my future needs be?
Will you need a highly scalable solution to meet much larger data sizes and users? Or do you expect the data needs to be fairly constant over time?
Be aware, as you answer this, that people often underestimate how much data and data sources they have, how many use cases they will have, how clean their data is, and how much their needs will change over time.
There are a lot of new, high-value BI options out there for SMBs, so it's worth a thorough investigation, since they have different strengths and weaknesses.
And in the interest of full disclosure, I work for Birst, a SaaS BI company (www.birst.com)
- Barbara
www.birst.com
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