When Inc. Magazine starts talking about what Business Intelligence software is, you know BI is moving down from the ivory tower into main street.

I was very heartened to see the recent article, “A Business Intelligence Software Primer” by Michelle V. Rafter. An article after my own heart.

Rafter’s article gets to the main point behind what Business Intelligence software, and business applications in general, should be about: providing real business value to real businesses.

Here are my favorite parts of Rafter’s article:

1. Using real world examples to explain benefits to business owners. I love rafter’s quote:

Now imagine there was a way to aggregate all the bits and bytes trapped in individual programs and run them through one giant filter that could spit out reports to help you run your business better — information like which routes trucks should take to get there fast without wasting gas or which product lines should be expanded because they pull in the biggest net profit.

In most discussions about BI these benefits are assumed, but the assumptions have been buried so deeply that the benefits have been lost in the shuffle. Small business people have to dig and dig to really find where the benefits are. Rafter nails it.

2. Providing a reason why business owners should use Business Intelligence applications.

What are the big business drivers for the adoption of BI applications? Rafter says accelerating the speed of business decisions, citing Michael Lock from The Aberdeen Group.

3. The growth of saas as a democratizing medium for bringing powerful applications such as Business Intelligence to the small business arena.

A key Aberdeen figure she sites is the adoption of BI applications by businesses with less than $50 million in revenues:

…in a poll of 650 companies Aberdeen Group did in October 2008, 22 percent of companies under $50 million that used BI software opted for a SaaS solution compared with 15 percent of mid-sized companies and 8 or 9 percent of large enterprises.

4. Need to drive a culture of information. In our own experience we have seen that when you empower front-line employees with information, they can make decisions that benefit the business without having to create a PowerPoint, present it in a meeting to top executives, and make a decision via committee.

One of our retail clients enabled store managers to make decisions mid-day to change point-of-purchase displays when up-to-the-minute reports showed in-store sales dropping.

That’s power, and that’s an information culture!

What do you think? Are Business Intelligence applications becoming easier to understand and use? Are small business CEOs and Presidents seeing the value to their business?

Please comment below or contact me directly to chat about it.

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