BI Tools Drive Performance for Small to Medium Sized Businesses

Leading Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) Leverage Business Intelligence (BI) to Aid in Producing an Average 29% Increase in Operating Profit


BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 6, 2009) - In the newly released report, "BI for the SMB 2009: How to Slash Cost and Empower the Business User," Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), found that 99% of top performing organizations were able to deliver business intelligence (BI) to their employees in a self-service, non IT-assisted capacity, helping improve adoption of the tools and spread them throughout the organization. This study collected data from 530 SMB organizations globally and found that these companies are exploring a multitude of deployment options for BI in order to affect more functions within the organization as well as more job roles within each function. By leveraging a simultaneously tactical and strategic approach to BI, these SMBs were able to spread BI across their organizations in order to produce substantial revenue and profit growth.

The value of a well conceived BI strategy is becoming more evident in all organizations but particularly in small and midsize companies. With the emergence of SaaS (Software as a Service), open source BI, and other on-demand approaches, the analytical firepower that was once reserved for the heaviest wallets in the industry is now available to smaller and more resource conscious organizations. The research shows that leading SMBs were able to implement their BI solutions in an average of 14 days, compared with 241 days for Laggard SMBs. This shorter deployment time enables the top performers to expend fewer resources to deploy and manage the BI solutions, and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their BI strategy.

"Many companies, particularly smaller organizations, suffer from a lack of transparency when it comes to the key aspects of their business that drive performance. As a result, data shows that SMBs are turning to BI in order to improve visibility into these business processes," explains Michael Lock, Research Analyst for Business Intelligence at Aberdeen Group.

The report is aimed at educating the end-user community as to how leading SMBs are developing a tailored approach to BI that can drive analytical capability to more users and maximize the value of their BI investment. The report recommends clear actions for Industry Average and Laggard companies to achieve these types of performance improvements.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Birst, Dimensional Insight, and Talend. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=6051.

For additional access to complimentary Information Technology Research, please visit http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/-information-technology.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen provides fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having queried more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen or call (617) 854-5200, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748.

© 2009 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Contact Information: Media Contact: Michael Lock Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5365 michael.lock@aberdeen.com