10 Tips for Implementing Business Intelligence for Small Companies

The cost of a Business Intelligence for small companies goes far beyond the purchase price. Time spent researching, implementing, and maintaining your BI software investment can snowball quickly and mistakes are often expensive.

Your time is valuable – save it by learning from other businesses’ experiences. We’ve compiled the top ten tips on successfully implementing BI software from professionals who have already taken the plunge.

Implementing Business Intelligence for Small Companies

10. Don’t just stop at a more intelligent business.

“BI is about better intelligence, but then what?” asks Stuart Easton, CEO of TransparentChoice. Easton says “that intelligence is fed to a group of people to make a decision and that’s where the value generated by better intelligence gets diluted by poor decision-making practice. Without addressing better decision making, any investment in BI is going to have a very limited impact.”

The best way to avoid making costly mistakes when choosing BI software is to do your research. Check out the features, demo the products if you can, and make sure to evaluate them using defined criteria.

Learn more: Business Intelligence – What Are the Warning Signs that you need it?

9. Empower end users by simplifying the toolset and infrastructure.

“You’ll never be able to gather all the requirements from the users of BI so they need to be empowered to create, change, and filter reports in order to meet their BI needs,” says Craig Abramson, Marketing Director for Third Wave Business Systems. However, “if the infrastructure is too complex then data anomalies are inevitable,” Abramson warns, “complex toolsets take away the user’s ability to be self-sufficient.”

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By Keith Cawley, CloudTweaks