By Tracy Fabian, Pre-sales engineer, and Fernando Labastida, communications specialist

What you don’t know will hurt you

Imagine you’re the owner of a successful wholesale company that’s been growing really fast. Large and small retailers are beating a path to your door to buy your product. Things are looking great. You’ve predicted sales are going to grow by 50%, so you plan purchases of your supplies accordingly.

All of a sudden, a year goes by, you don’t have any cash to pay next month’s payroll and your warehouse is full of unsold items.  Read more... (1803 words, 2 images, estimated 7:13 mins reading time)

Business Intelligence for Small Business

By David Abdo, CEO, KPIOnline.com

Small businesses today are in survival mode.

That’s the stark conclusion from a recent blog post “Small-business optimism rises-but so does stress,” by Rieva Lesonsky. She cited a recent American Express OPEN® Small Business Monitor survey.

Forty-one percent of those surveyed said their focus for the next six months will be maintaining current sources of income; just 26 percent are focused on growth—the lowest number in the history of the Monitor survey.

How can you, as an entrepreneur, survive while maintaining current sources of income?  Read more... (747 words, 2 images, estimated 2:59 mins reading time)

Typical BI User

By David Abdo, CEO, KPIOnline.com

The Real Reason for BI: Lost In Gobbledygook, Speeds And Feeds

In the introduction to the revised edition of his edgy eBook “TheGobbldeygook Manifesto,” David Meerman Scott declared:

Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I’m gonna puke!

David told me himself he was thinking of the Business Intelligence industry.

Just kidding.

I’ve never spoken to David Meerman Scott before, but I do follow him on Twitter.

But in the constant discussion of dashboards, pre-canned and customized reports, regression analysis, slice and dice, drill-ups, drill-downs, predictive analysis, etc., it seems we are caught up in our own industry gobbldeygook.

The real reason for the use of Business Intelligence tools has gotten lost in the shuffle.