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You don’t have to look very hard to see that technology companies are targeting the small to medium business (SMB) market. The legacy business intelligence (BI) software vendors are no exception. The Global SMB market is growing and, with that growth, needs the kind of insight BI can provide.

The SMB Market

What is the SMB market? Unfortunately, there is not a single accepted definition. In the EU, small- and medium-sized companies are formally defined as having less than 50 and 250 employees, respectively. In the U.S., companies up to 500 employees are generally considered “mid-sized.” Correspondingly, mid-sized companies have revenues between $50M and $200M. A recent article in Computerworld UK noted that, rather than using the more typical company size definitions, one large, legacy BI vendor considers the mid-market to be any company up to $1B in revenue and 1000 employees.

Why the SMB Market Needs a Different Approach

The legacy BI vendors have been locked in a decades-long battle with each other over the Fortune 500 market. Over the years, narrow competition has forced quite a bit of vendor consolidation. Bigger players acquired smaller ones to get their technology and their customers. The resulting conglomerate vendors now offer a collection of incoherent product lines and inconsistent architectural models. The complexity of the software requires a lot of expensive training and on-site professional services and support. Recent financial reports suggest that this phenomenon may be with us for a while. The legacy BI vendors have become increasingly dependent on professional services, rather than product license sales, to sustain their business models.

This model just doesn’t fit the SMB marketplace. Like the larger companies, small- and medium-sized companies are experiencing unprecedented data growth. The SMB firms need to understand their data in order to maximize growth and profitability. They need standard corporate reports, graphs and charts to monitor operations. They need advanced analytical tools like interactive heat maps and geographic mapping to help them identify key trends and opportunities. They need dashboards to serve as a consolidated interface to see all of these things in one place, without having to switch between different windows and applications. The reality is that most small- and medium-sized firms do not have the teams of IT resources required to deploy and maintain complex, legacy software applications.

Small and medium-sized companies need to look for a BI solution that is not “shoe-horned” down to fit their needs. The solution should give them all of the functionality of a complete BI platform without a big price tag, without the need for a long-term professional services engagement and with a straightforward maintenance and licensing model that meets their needs.

Business Intelligence for the SMB Market

Why the SMB Market Needs a Different Approach

Next ... Special Considerations for BI in the SMB Market

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