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Business Intelligence and Big Data from a small enterprise's point of view [Malta Independent, The]
[October 24, 2014]

Business Intelligence and Big Data from a small enterprise's point of view [Malta Independent, The]


(Malta Independent, The Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Andrea Muscat Over the past few years, the terms 'Big Data' and 'Business Intelligence' have become popular buzz phrases for many large enterprise CIO's. Standard business intelligence tools have been branded as expensive, reliant on integration as well as requiring heavy technical training for end users. This led to focus shifting towards BI tools that are much easier to integrate, and therefore much more cost effective. This has made it possible for small enterprises to also make use of BI software, experiencing all the benefits it reaps in a cost effective manner.



The latest BI products have developed to favour Small Enterprises. The cloud has had significant effects on BI software, making software more affordable and more lightweight.  Cloud solutions have enabled BI software vendors to scale down on costs and pass on savings to the client.  Thanks to the cloud, small enterprises will also avoid investing a significant amount in costly hardware and infrastructure to implement a BI tool. A great example of a BI tool on the cloud is SAP's BIOnDemand.

The first generation of BI tools required the company's data analysts to have a vast amount of obscure technical knowledge of the product. This was clearly unattainable for small enterprises who would have had to invest considerable time and effort in training employees or employing additional staff. Such situations have improved as many new tools are allowing small enterprises to gain insight from data instead of just giving users the power to manipulate and crunch data in many more ways than one. Today's BI tools aim to put the non-technical end user in the driving seat, allowing small enterprises to make use of BI tools without employing dedicated technical expertise.


Business Intelligence tools are also being bundled with industry specific templates and pre-packaged data. This will allow vendors to save time and effort in the implementation of the selected business intelligence tool,as well as delivering impressive results to the end client quickly.

Small Businesses can also greatly benefit from the availability of BI tools on mobile devices. For many small clients, using a mobile platform instead of the traditional desktop or laptop can be even more advantageous. Many vendors such as SAP nowadays offer BI mobile solutions at no extra cost with no extra setup. This can be extremely beneficial especially to those companies who are already mobile (or partly mobile).

When small businesses are shopping for a business intelligence tool, clients should make sure that the tool will not restrict the business into looking at data in just one way. Solutions such as SAP BusinessObjects, which comes with a full suite of different BI tools such as SAP's report formatting tool Crystal Reports, are agnostic BI tools which allow clients to extract data from multiple data sources such as Microsoft SQL, Oracle as well as platforms such as salesforce.com. The main aim is to empower end users to transform operational data into insight from a variety of different data sources, whether being SQL databases or simple excel sheets.  Small Enterprises have now been enabled to enter the era of Business Intelligence, thanks to the latest innovations in software. The fact that a convergence is also taking place between ERP solutions and BI tools, creating a grey area between the two, allows small enterprises to enjoy the best of both worlds in one holistic solution. Such tools are also giving small firms a shot to challenge the bigger players in their respective industries.  As data takes centre stage in this day and age, it has become a key enterprise asset. As new tactics and strategies of data exploitation are used, one can easily begin to identify the leaders from the slackers.

Andrea Muscat is a certified Business Intelligence Consultant at Alert Solutions Ltd, a local SAP Partner and Value-Added-Reseller.For more information about how BI can help your company go to www.alert-solutions.com TECH Update Microsoft have announced that they will soon be releasing Windows 10. Interestingly they seem to have skipped a number, going straight from Window 8 (or 8.1) to 10 without ever releasing version 9 - probably in order to impart a clear message that Windows 10 is a major leap ahead and massive improvement on its predecessor.

The OS will mark a return of the Start button, a feature that had disappeared in Windows 8, much to the chagrin of many users. In fact it appears that this latest version of the MS Operating System will incorporate a number of popular features from Windows 7 and Windows 8, in a bid to appear familiar to users and increase take-up.

Windows 8 has not been adopted widely due to the major changes in interface, which increased the learning curve for users. Clearly Windows 10 will address this, in a bid to get people to finally migrate from Windows 7, which is still the defacto operating system in use by the vast majority of businesses.

eMarketing Update Televisions are no longer used purely to view soap operas or cartoons. In a bid to get more bang for their buck advertisers have now integrated television content into their Web 2.0 plans. Viewers are encouraged to use their smartphones and tablets to access and interact with content that builds upon television commercials or programming. This union of television and social media has been dubbed "social TV." Research has confirmed what most of us knew already - the great majority (84%) of smartphone and tablet usersnowadays watch television with a second screen in hand! (2014 Nielsen Digital Consumer Report) This makes it possible for viewers to interact in real time social media conversations with other viewers or even with the programme or product. In essence putting a clear call to action in a TV commercial is now more relevant and immediate than ever - 26% of tablet users and 16%of smartphone users looked up product information online upon seeing a television advert.

For more eMarketing news go to www.alertemarketing.com  (c) 2013 Standard Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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