One of the fastest growing sectors of business analysis is Business Intelligence: company data used to facilitate decision making. This data, typically historical, is used to evaluate company performance such as sales, invoicing, production, order delivery, and other analytics. Unfortunately, most small businesses consider such technology out of reach financially. They have the impression that the projects necessary to deliver these types of systems are only afforded by medium to large scale organizations. This is simply not true.

www.tapeandmedia.com - A Case Study

tapeandmedia.com is an authorized reseller for the major manufacturers and sell professional quality video, audio and data media and accessories at discount prices. They are family owned and operated and have been in business for 10 years. Recently, Connect I.T. delivered a Business Intelligence system that allows them to evaluate sales trends, as well as examine up to date supplier pricing. As a result, today they have the ability to make well-informed decisions on product purchases and identify the suppliers offering the best prices. tapeandmedia.com employs a small accounting application that is based on SQL Server, which made it easy to migrate data from their existing system to SQL Server Analysis Services, a back-end database system commonly used for Business Intelligence applications. The accounting application also maintains historical data which enables the new system to offer three years of history. Also, Microsoft Excel was utilized as the front-end analysis tool, thus increasing the deployment time and decreasing the learning curve of the decision makers. Simple in complexity, coupled with the fact the main data source was homogenous in nature, helped to decrease the overall cost and deployment time. This system was delivered in a mere 60 Hours. While larger corporations utilize this technology in much more complex fashions, this case study exemplifies how Business Intelligence can be brought to small businesses as well.