Business Intelligence for Small- to Medium-Sized Companies

Date: 01/27/2004

Summary
Smaller companies (100 – 1,000 employees) have not had the resources to benefit from business intelligence tools like larger companies have in the last ten years. But the huge small- to medium-sized business market is now coming around. One software provider, Databeacon, has been developing a business intelligence solution that addresses the limited-resources challenge faced by smaller companies and provides them the benefits of BI tools. Ventana Research advises smaller organizations to examine flexible, easy to install and cost effective BI offerings like Databeacon’s that both inform and empower employees to be effective in their roles and responsibilities.

Assessment
Smaller companies (100 - to 1,000 employees) with limited budgets and IT resources have not benefited from the Business Intelligence tools the way larger companies have in the last ten years. The high costs of BI solutions and the IT resources needed to deploy and maintain prevents smaller businesses from adopting them. Databeacon, a Web reporting and data analysis software provider, has been addressing the challenges faced by smaller companies for the last nine years. It has simplified the process to publish information that can be accessed, analyzed and delivered to users via a world wide web browser.

Many of the larger BI vendors continue to broaden the functionality of their solutions for larger organizations to meet the requirements of global 2000 compaines, increasing the total cost of ownership (see TCO Assessment Advantages). Databeacon on the other hand, maintains a focus on simplifying the access and embedding of web-based reporting and analysis through a configurable server that integrates with your web server on a variety of operating platforms. The Databeacon Publisher server component connects to XML, JDBC and ODBC sources and transforms them to analytic views that are easily published out to users. This makes the technology easily adopted and leveraged into third party solutions that are sold by value added resellers or software providers.

Though organizations will continue to leverage Microsoft Excel as the personal productivity tool for reporting and analysis, this product’s downfall is the lack of conformity and its complexity in supporting small- to medium-sized business. Databeacon provides a front end tool called Databeacon Insight Viewer that is easy to leverage by a wide variety of business users. Databeacon’s customers and partners have found the product easier to install, more flexible and easy to use compared to more structured and formatted reporting tools. Ventana Research believes that the gap between spreadsheets and high end BI solutions is quite large and recommends that organizations examine solutions like Databeacon.

Market Impact
Improving business effectiveness requires organizations to adopt business intelligence tools that enable executive management and business managers to work together, not in separate information system silos. Offerings like DataBeacon will become more critical to improve business and operational performance where smart organizations require interactive reporting and analysis over traditional static web reports. In addition, market adoption will continue where simple installation, administration and pricing remain key principles of the solution offering. Ventana Research is now seeing this class of BI software provider like Databeacon stand out from the noisier, high-end BI providers and sees them penetrating the huge small- to medium-sized business market.

Recommendation
Ventana Research recommends small- to medium-sized organizations that continue to build their data repositories with custom-built systems or third party packages move beyond silo-ed Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and static reporting systems. Smaller companies (100 to 1000 employees) should examine BI offerings like Databeacon that both inform and empower employees to be effective in their roles and responsibilities. Larger BI brands maybe appealing to examine. but total cost of ownership and ongoing maintenance must be seriously considered before proceeding.

By Mark Smith Click here for the full Ventana Research Report