Putting it very simply: because there are a lot of small and medium-sized entities, and they need support for their business intelligence (BI).
We tend to forget there are only five hundred "Fortune 500" companies, but there are over 7.4 million small and medium-sized organizations ("SMOs") with fewer than 500 employees each in the USA alone (including both for-profit and nonprofit establishments). Large organizations dominate the headlines, contribute significant dollars to political causes to get their interests served, and have the staff, expertise, and budget to carry strategic planning, continuous improvement, and business intelligence, research, and analysis functions as part of their regular overhead. At the level of small and medium-sized organizations, the dynamics are very different.
For private SMOs, the priorities are sales and profit "this month". For nonprofits, the priorities are mission and member / client service, with levels of activity to be reported at the next board meeting. For both types of SMOs, there is usually no "spare" budget, overhead has to be kept to a minimum, and making payroll today is more pressing than continuous improvement and planning for five years from now. They are also generally less aware of just how to incorporate any actual business intelligence / research findings into their daily operations, staff behavior, workplace culture, and future strategic plans.
Yet there are many BI functions and tools that small and medium-sized organizations can -- and indeed must -- take advantage of in order to find and retain customers and members, expand their reach, improve internal business processes, contain costs, improve service-delivery, and make their limited staff as productive as possible.
This blog aims to help small and medium-sized organizations address that situation by showing what they stand to gain, and how the many technological advances of recent years have reduced cost barriers and created opportunities for them to take full advantage of BI to scale up activity and to identify and respond to changes in their markets. SMOs can reap improvements and gains that are, relatively speaking, even more impactful for them than are those achieved by large companies. With patience, smarts, and a willingness by management to embrace analytics, BI should allow SMOsto fulfill their destinies as more agile and innovative successes than their large competitors.
We tend to forget there are only five hundred "Fortune 500" companies, but there are over 7.4 million small and medium-sized organizations ("SMOs") with fewer than 500 employees each in the USA alone (including both for-profit and nonprofit establishments). Large organizations dominate the headlines, contribute significant dollars to political causes to get their interests served, and have the staff, expertise, and budget to carry strategic planning, continuous improvement, and business intelligence, research, and analysis functions as part of their regular overhead. At the level of small and medium-sized organizations, the dynamics are very different.
For private SMOs, the priorities are sales and profit "this month". For nonprofits, the priorities are mission and member / client service, with levels of activity to be reported at the next board meeting. For both types of SMOs, there is usually no "spare" budget, overhead has to be kept to a minimum, and making payroll today is more pressing than continuous improvement and planning for five years from now. They are also generally less aware of just how to incorporate any actual business intelligence / research findings into their daily operations, staff behavior, workplace culture, and future strategic plans.
Yet there are many BI functions and tools that small and medium-sized organizations can -- and indeed must -- take advantage of in order to find and retain customers and members, expand their reach, improve internal business processes, contain costs, improve service-delivery, and make their limited staff as productive as possible.
This blog aims to help small and medium-sized organizations address that situation by showing what they stand to gain, and how the many technological advances of recent years have reduced cost barriers and created opportunities for them to take full advantage of BI to scale up activity and to identify and respond to changes in their markets. SMOs can reap improvements and gains that are, relatively speaking, even more impactful for them than are those achieved by large companies. With patience, smarts, and a willingness by management to embrace analytics, BI should allow SMOsto fulfill their destinies as more agile and innovative successes than their large competitors.
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