I had a meeting with our company CPA today. Terrific and gifted professional who helps us navigate the perilous waters of Profit, loss, tax strategies, safe harbors, new COBRA rules and basically how much money we can’t keep.
We got to talking about the economy, the general business climate and emerging trends in various industries (especially those about to get a lift from some huge government spending). When the topic turned to what we do for businesses (help them optimize operational and financial performance via the intelligent use of analytic information), she boldly asked “shouldn’t everyone be using analytics?” This struck me as an excellent and revealing question.
When considering the improvement businesses stand to gain from leveraging key facts about their operations (think inventory optimization, customer profitability, intelligent marketing, etc.) it seems a shame that the adoption of business intelligence and data warehousing has largely been confined to larger organizations. I say a shame, although not completely surprising given the time, cost and complexity that has historically been
involved in such undertakings.
What’s more, I believe that there is still somewhat of a value disconnect in the world of SMB’s (universal acronym for “small and medium sized businesses”) who may not perceive the value of information (and information technology in general) to the level of their big business counterparts. This fact was also validated by our accountant who confirmed that many of her clients (most of them SMB’s) “have no clue” as to the value contributors and detractors in their businesses.
Part of this may stem from a lack of need for analytics. For example, consider analyzing retail product sales numbers for Target Stores (and their thousands of SKU’s) vs. the mom and pop grocer who knows all their customers by name down to the 1/2 gallon of milk they buy every Tuesday). Also likely is that the availability and advantage of leveraging business intelligence is simply not understood (nor valued yet) at this level of the market.
Despite this current information demand/supply disconnect, I see a day very soon where the shrinking time and monetary footprint of delivering valuable, straight-forward business analytics will result in much more rapid mainstream adoption. When this happens, we may actually see a new era where indeed everyone uses analytics (and wouldn’t have it any other way).
