9 Opportunities for Selling BI to the SMB

The rich, actionable data provided by effective business
intelligence systems aren’t just for large enterprises. Small to medium
organizations can take advantage, too. Given the right process changes,
and some help from channel partners to implement them alongside
appropriate technology, SMBs can make decisions more quickly and bump
up revenue through BI, according to Aberdeen Group research out this
month. In its report, BI for the SMB 2009: How to Slash Cost and Empower the Business User,
Aberdeen found that among SMBs with revenues less than $1 billion,
those who employed BI best practices saw an average of 29 percent
year-over-year revenue growth versus the 4 percent growth of those who
did not employ BI best practices.

The following nine steps are recommendations for small and medium
organizations  to improve their BI intelligence. They all provide
channel partners great opportunity to not only sell BI tools, but to
layer consulting and services on top of those.