Recently, many small and medium businesses have adopted Business Intelligence tools. The fact that you are reading this tells me that you are considering this move as well.

Today we will look at what Business Intelligence tools do and why you need one for your business. We'll also look at the different types of tools and why a cloud-based solution is your best choice. We'll wrap up with a look at a powerful BI tool that is ideal for an SMB like yours.

Powerful Reasons to Use a Business Intelligence Tool

BI tools turn raw data into actionable information for your business. Someone in your business is probably already doing this kind of work, so why should you switch to some new tool. Transitioning to a new system and training everyone to use it will burn resources. And of course you'll have another piece of software to pay for.

Despite the drawbacks, there are strong reasons for your company to invest in a tool. Here are six of them:

It can boost your bottom line You can leverage outside data Your business will become more data-driven Your business will be able to respond faster than larger competitors It will integrate data from different departments for better insights It will spread the benefits across your SMB

Let's take a look at each of these reasons in more detail.

1. It Can Boost Your Bottom Line

Your SMB generates a huge amount of raw data. From sales figures, to return rates, to resource use, your business generates volumes of data. Your company likely processes at least some of this data. Doing so consumes lots of resources. Staff poring over data manually trying to make sense of it is a waste.

A Business Intelligence tool will do all this number crunching for you. This frees your staff to do other things. Also, many BI tools include powerful visualization modules. Instead of simply producing reports based on the data, they render it as charts and graphs. This makes it easy to see details and trends that are hard to spot in words. You'll can drill down into these visualizations to see all the details as well.

As a result, you will be able to spot trends, problems, and opportunities you might otherwise miss.

2. You Can Leverage Outside Data

Business Intelligence tools can not only process your company's data quickly. They can handle far more data than your company generates. This gives you the opportunity to take advantage of outside data to gain more insight. Projects such as the US government's Data.gov publish data on a wide variety of topics. This includes industry-specific data and tons of demographic data. Imagine combining this data with your company's internal data. The result can be far better information you can leverage.

3. Your Business Will Become More Data-Driven

Your business probably collects more data than it can readily use. Drawing out useful information manually takes too much manpower. And it takes too long. A BI tool will make data-based information easily available throughout your business. This will allow the organization to make use of it. The result: better decision-making throughout the organization.

4. Your Business Will Be Able to Respond Faster than Larger Competitors

Traditionally, SMBs have been more agile than their larger competitors. But you lost that edge when only the biggest companies had Business Intelligence tools. They could be acting on crucial information while you were still grinding through spreadsheets.

Now cloud-based BI tools give even the smallest businesses similar power. The right tools let you turn raw data into information like the big boys. Regain the advantage of your size and agility. With good tools, you will again be able to respond faster than your larger competitors.

5. It Will Integrate Data from Different Departments for Better Insights

Another problem with manually crunching business data is that the information remains siloed. Dealing with your own department's information is hard enough. Sharing and integrating with data from other departments is too much work.

With their speed and capacity to handle huge amounts of data, BI tools can eliminate this problem. Many tools create dashboards that make it easy to see all your information. Think how helpful it would be to have everything available from a single dashboard. Or have exactly the information you need displayed together, regardless of the source. What kind of insights could you gain from having everything together in one place?

6. It Will Spread the Benefits Across Your SMB

Information sharing can make your business more efficient. Cloud-based Business Intelligence tools make it easy to share information across your SMB. But you don't need to print and distribute paper reports that are soon out of date.

Users can pull up the appropriate information or dashboard using their web browser. Many BI tools support mobile devices as well. This means your people can connect to the information they need at any time.

At the same time, the tools give you complete control of access to information. You can control which people or groups have access to which information. Strong encryption and secure data centers make sure that your information remains secure.

What Kind of BI Tool is Better for Your SMB

The preceding six reasons make it clear that a Business Intelligence tool can help your SMB. The question now becomes what type of tool to choose. As with other powerful software systems you have options. The main choice is between on-site hosted solutions and cloud-based solutions.

On-site hosted solutions offer the benefit of complete control of your system. With your data contained on your servers, within your facilities, you control everything. But there are some big drawbacks to an on-site hosted solution.

First, you must build and maintain your own data center. This is expensive and time-consuming. It also requires you to provide the technical expertise to run and maintain the software. Depending on the technical capacities of your business, you may need to bring in pricey outside consultants to help.

You may also end up in a capacity and licensing crunch. Do you plan for future expansion and pay for hardware and licenses you won't use for some time? Or do you accept the need to rebuild infrastructure and buy new licenses whenever you need to add users?

Also, this kind of solution tends to weak on external connectivity. Working off-site and collaborating with outside vendors can be a problem.

A cloud-based solution addresses these issues. In the cloud-based model you don't host the software. The software company hosts and maintains everything. That means you don't need to build, maintain, and staff a data center. You connect to the software through your web browser. All you need is a license and a good connection to the Internet.

Scaling your Business Intelligence tool is a lot easier when you don't have to acquire new servers and train new techs to run them. The cloud services make sure that additional capacity is always available. Add licenses and you are ready to go.

This easy scalability allows you to deploy a BI tool gradually. You can start with a single department. Once you gain experience with the tool, you can roll it out to other areas of the business.

A Tool to Try

Sisense is a tool that straddles the line between on-site hosted and cloud-based systems. It works with external data sources such as AWS and Azure. It also works with your internal data sources, giving you maximum flexibility. Wherever your data is located, Sisense can connect to it.

The actual processing of your data is done on a single commodity server in your facility. The design of the software allows a single server to handle Terabytes of data and thousands of users. This may sound unbelievable at first. But the company has developed technologies that take maximum advantage of the storage and processing power available in modern microprocessors. That, combined with innovative software approaches, allows the tool to get surprising performance out of commodity hardware. As the Wall Street Journal put it, "Sisense tools show a small laptop can crunch big data."

A non-technical person can install and use the software. This eliminates the issue of providing a data center and specialized staffing to run it. The Sisense software package is a complete BI stack. It includes everything you need to analyze your data. Sisense can then display your information on customizable dashboards.

One thing this Business Intelligence tool is known for is the ability to join disparate data sets. Built-in connectors make it simple to connect the software to virtually any data source. Examples include:

Microsoft Excel

Google Analytics

PostgreSQL

Splunk

Hadoop Hive

ZenDesk

SalesForce

Once the data sources are connected, you can drag-and-drop the data to combine data sets. Without the need for technical experts or data conversions, regular business users can do their own analysis.

What about connecting with mobile users and outside partners? Whether you are using hosted data, cloud-based data, or a combination, the Sisense user interface is through your web browser. To make that possible, this tool has a built-in web server. As a result, the Sisense dashboards are accessible to anyone with a web browser and login rights. The tool's dashboards are designed to work on any web browser, whether on a desktop machine, a tablet, or a smartphone.

Many Business Intelligence tool vendors provide some sort of trial or demonstration. Sisense does too, with a live demo on their website. More interestingly, they offer to set up a demo that runs with your real data. And they offer to have this up and running within 90 minutes.

Whether you are looking for an on-site hosted solution, a cloud-based solution, or a hybrid of the two, Sisense is worth investigating. To learn more about it, click to go to the Sisense website or head directly over to their interactive demo page.