By Gabriel Mercado

New business intelligence software and ways to deal with viruses and malware

Let’s say your SME occasionally runs special projects that involve certain employees dropping whatever they are doing so they can take time to do certain tasks. How much money do you lose whenever they do that? Is the time away from work worth it? How much money is saved or made when they work on it anyway? Will it justify hiring new staff just for that purpose?

What if your company warehouse is maintaining inventory of several thousand different products as well as caring for company equipment that cannot be stored anywhere else. How much company resources are being spent on doing so exactly? Is it more cost efficient to separate the two? Sometimes it feels as if it’s more trouble than it is worth so why not outsource the job? But wait, before you do that, why not find out just how efficient it is so you’ll know if you did the right thing?

Most likely, the examples I stated above are simplistic. In truth, business people have questions about their organization that range from the mundane to the scientific, with many variations in between. Or sometimes it’s just a feeling that something is not right, that an issue is not being addressed or a task is not being efficiently done the right way.

There are certain types of software built to answer such questions — questions that go far beyond what typical accounting software and especially a spreadsheet can provide. Typically called Business Intelligence, Wikipedia describes these as technologies, applications and practices for the collection, analysis, integration and presentation of business information.

In short, it’s a step beyond off-the-shelf accounting software where you will need to sit down with consultants and experts to thoroughly discuss what type of data you are looking for in order for them to customize a way for you to view information you need to make decisions. Information that can be simple or far more complex than the examples I stated above can be made more specific to the kind of business you are running and the way you want to run it.

Read the full story in the January-February issue of SME Insight Magazine