Skip to content
Tiatra, LLCTiatra, LLC
Tiatra, LLC
Information Technology Solutions for Washington, DC Government Agencies
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact
 
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Services
    • IT Engineering and Support
    • Software Development
    • Information Assurance and Testing
    • Project and Program Management
  • Clients & Partners
  • Careers
  • News
  • Contact

Are SMBs invited to the business intelligence (BI) party?

Executive leaders of small businesses and startups frequently lament that they lack the same access to data and insights that enterprise competitors and other more entrenched players enjoy. 

Most SMBs haven’t fully adopted business intelligence (BI) analytics, citing various reasons such as a lack of scalable technology infrastructure or skilled human capital. They’re also hesitant to invest in BI because of the perception that it doesn’t align with budget and operational constraints. 

Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global BI market will grow to $43 billion by 2028, up from $24 billion in 2021. However, the overall adoption rate of BI is just 26% compared to 80% in companies with over 5,000 employees. These findings clearly indicate that larger corporations use BI much more than SMBs. 

So, what’s stopping them? 

“There’s no single answer to this question. One issue is that small businesses rarely have enough resources to set up a dedicated data science (DS) team, nor can they afford to bring in temporary consultants,” said Itzik Levy, CEO of small business management software vcita. “They’re frequently forced to make difficult tradeoffs when it comes to priorities, nobody has the time to learn a new specialized skill.” 

Mindset is also a problem. “The main limitation of SMEs to implement analytics is the fact that they think that these new approaches are only applicable to large companies,” wrote Jesus Fajardo, a senior data science analyst. 

The solution: business intelligence tools 

While mindset is a difficult obstacle to overcome, technology and budget are easier ones to surmount. 

Most technology functions of businesses today are SaaS-driven. They have leveled the playing field for SMBs and helped them create automated processes for: 

  • Creating invoices, proposals, and quotes 
  • Sending messages and scheduling appointments with clients 
  • Tracking time spent on different projects 
  • Running marketing campaigns 

However, the data that goes into and comes out of all these processes can be overwhelming, complex, and expensive to collect. That’s where business intelligence (BI) apps and tools come in. 

SMBs that have undergone digital transformation are already generating data relating to these business operations disciplines. With the right BI features, they can derive insights that help meet their business objectives from those signals. 

While the capabilities of actual tools vary, it’s important to understand how to make BI work to your advantage. Small business owners can use BI to do things not normally expected of them and hitherto the domain of enterprise companies – such as analyzing consumer behavior, estimating market trends, forecasting sales, and improving customer experience. 

Let’s break down some of these advantages. 

Make informed business decisions 

What do you need to make business decisions that move the needle? BI can help you in the following ways: 

Identify market trends: Managers and analysts can use data collected from various sources to identify upcoming and maturing products in the market and changing consumer consumption patterns. They can then use this data to measure the company’s sales performance and predict future outcomes. 

Track the performance of your business: Business performance goes way beyond revenue and profits. BI helps you set goals, map out tactics to meet them, understand how you’re performing vis-a-vis these goals, and what changes you can make to stay on track. 

Compare data with competitors: Competitive analytics is perhaps the biggest benefit BI tools confers on new players and SMBs. You can track competitors’ strategies and performance in branding, marketing, production, stock market, and compare it with your own over a period of time. 

Increase profit margins: Identifying and plugging gaps in different areas of operations – whether it’s sourcing, marketing or delivery – can help SMBs save a dollar here and a dollar there and lead to significant profits at the end of the year. 

Predict the success of your business: If you know where the market is going, what your competition is doing, as well as how much you’re selling over time, it’s a matter of time before you improve your forecasting accuracy. 

Provide a great customer experience 

You can gain valuable customer information using the right BI analytics. This data will allow you to better understand customers’ demographics (such as age, gender, and location), shopping habits, interests and intents, as well as preferred communication channels. 

You can then go a step further to see how customers are engaging with your brand, what they’re saying about your products (and customer service), and analyze their likes and dislikes to improve the efficiency of your marketing campaigns. 

BI can help you answer questions about your customers, such as: 

  • What are the demographics of my customer base? 
  • Which products did they buy more of? 
  • Which products receive the maximum complaints? 
  • What new trends is my audience gravitating towards? 

Each of these answers tells you a bit more about your customers’ dynamics with your business. BI is all about understanding the customer journey from the first brand interaction to conversion. For example, local businesses such as pavers, roofers, and landscapers can find out which of their services are more in-demand, what designs their customers prefer, average incomes and other demographic information, etc. This helps them focus on the more profitable customer segments and engage them on appropriate channels. 

Data also helps you improve customer experience by providing personalized recommendations, targeted campaigns, and automated messages based on shopping behavior. 

Improve workforce productivity 

Remote and hybrid work practices have changed the way most organizations operate, leading to new challenges in maintaining a productive workforce. Add to that, the organization structure itself has changed in many companies – there are no hierarchies anymore, and teams are formed and disbanded according to the necessities of the project at hand.  

This is where BI can provide critical insights for SMBs. AI-driven technology can bundle up years of HR experience and enable everyday decisions that improve employee productivity.  

The right tools can help you track individual/team performance, analyze strengths and weaknesses, identify skills gaps, and create a rewards-and-development progression plan that will lead to optimal performance from each employee. 

Leverage data to fine-tune strategy 

With the help of BI tools, SMBs can access critical data on customer behavior, social media marketing, inventory management, and more – in real time. In fact, lean companies are now moving towards a DIY, smart approach to data, characterized as self-service business intelligence (SSBI). SSBI is all about allowing the end-user to interact with data directly as well as manage it. 

The more control your employees have over data, the more chances your strategies have of succeeding. BI provides an objective analysis of how your business is performing and helps identify the most effective strategy you can use to achieve stated goals and targets. It provides valuable information on where your company should focus its efforts to increase sales and drive profits. 

How, you ask? 

  • SMBs can monitor each marketing campaign at a granular level, analyze its performance, and change track according to KPIs. To go a step further, a small or local business can even monitor global competitors’ marketing campaigns to a great extent and tweak its marketing tactics accordingly. 
  • BI simplifies traditionally complex forecasting in the form of SaaS tools and levels the playing field for SMBs. It lets them accurately predict future outcomes based on past data. 
  • Data visualization tools enable SMBs to lay out critical data visually in a form that reveals patterns in data even to inexperienced observers. 

Business intelligence aims to help leaders, managers, and departmental employees by providing them with usable key information at the right times. That brings us back to the question of mindset. “Small business owners need BI to look for those parts of the business that are driving the most growth, which might be drowned out by all the noise of getting things done,” Levy emphasized. “Once these growth levers have been identified, leaders can double down in the right places to bolster revenue.” 

The party has just begun 

A recent research paper identified big data analytics as a core driver of operational resilience for SMBs. With better data integration and analysis, SMBs can enable organizational knowledge-sharing, stay competitive, and spur innovation. 

While data analytics answers specific queries, explains why events took place, and predicts what happens next, BI builds powerful non-linear models that drive business strategy. 

Lean SMBs that can gather timely intelligence from the powerful BI platforms available today will steal a march over the competition by identifying opportunities and threats faster. They will know where to spend their money, how much to spend, and what outcomes to expect. 

Big Data, Business Intelligence, Business Intelligence and Analytics Software


Read More from This Article: Are SMBs invited to the business intelligence (BI) party?
Source: News

Category: NewsFebruary 6, 2023
Tags: art

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:8 steps to turning around a toxic IT cultureNextNext post:Attacks targeting employees are the main cause of avoidable breaches

Related posts

Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
May 30, 2025
Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
May 30, 2025
The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
May 30, 2025
Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
May 30, 2025
“AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
May 30, 2025
“ROI는 어디에?” AI 도입을 재고하게 만드는 실패 사례
May 30, 2025
Recent Posts
  • Barb Wixom and MIT CISR on managing data like a product
  • Avery Dennison takes culture-first approach to AI transformation
  • The agentic AI assist Stanford University cancer care staff needed
  • Los desafíos de la era de la ‘IA en todas partes’, a fondo en Data & AI Summit 2025
  • “AI 비서가 팀 단위로 지원하는 효과”···퍼플렉시티, AI 프로젝트 10분 완성 도구 ‘랩스’ 출시
Recent Comments
    Archives
    • May 2025
    • April 2025
    • March 2025
    • February 2025
    • January 2025
    • December 2024
    • November 2024
    • October 2024
    • September 2024
    • August 2024
    • July 2024
    • June 2024
    • May 2024
    • April 2024
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • November 2023
    • October 2023
    • September 2023
    • August 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • March 2023
    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    Categories
    • News
    Meta
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
    Tiatra LLC.

    Tiatra, LLC, based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, proudly serves federal government agencies, organizations that work with the government and other commercial businesses and organizations. Tiatra specializes in a broad range of information technology (IT) development and management services incorporating solid engineering, attention to client needs, and meeting or exceeding any security parameters required. Our small yet innovative company is structured with a full complement of the necessary technical experts, working with hands-on management, to provide a high level of service and competitive pricing for your systems and engineering requirements.

    Find us on:

    FacebookTwitterLinkedin

    Submitclear

    Tiatra, LLC
    Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.