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Smart Choices

Business intelligence is not just for the big guys any more. As applications grow cheaper and easier to run, more small- and mid-market CIOs are using BI to drive innovation and create competitive advantage

How BI Helps You Grow

One of the most difficult transitions for mid-market companies is that of making the leap to become a large business. Investing in bigger staffs to support that level of revenue, managing over an increasingly large geographic area and competing against businesses that have even larger budgets and better brand name recognition are just some of the challenges. So some mid-market CIOs have turned to BI as part of a strategy to grow and better compete as their companies bump up against bigger and better-financed operations.

At Delta Sonic, for example, business executives wanted a better idea of what was — or wasn't — driving sales so that strategic business decisions were no longer a case of trial and error. Executives at Clif Bar, a $US480 million manufacturer of nutrition and snack bars, began considering BI after its two largest competitors were acquired by multibillion-dollar global corporations. Blue Mountain Ski Resort got into BI after an investment company bought it and planned to more than double its size by investing nearly $US1 billion into the business over five years. And the midsize financial services firm JBHanauer saw BI as a key to its survival as it watched other mid-market financial institutions go out of business or get bought by the large financial houses. "We're one of the last surviving middle players," says Charlene Barnes, CIO and executive vice president. BI, she says, "is strategic to keeping us alive".

Given the competitive environment in which today's companies operate, BI and data warehousing consistently top the CIO's list of planned spending priorities, according to a July 2006 survey of CIOs by Merrill Lynch. "Organizations of all sizes are struggling with very similar problems," says Aberdeen's Belkin.

Companies are also creating more and more data. Netezza's Baum says his clients' data doubles every year. And with more customer data coming in from e-commerce activities, and technologies such as RFID providing more specific data on individual consumers, companies have information mountains to mine for what drives sales.

For mid-market organizations, using an Excel spreadsheet to inform strategic business decisions just isn't cutting it any more.

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