This document discusses how business intelligence (BI) tools have traditionally been too complex, costly and difficult for small to midsize companies to implement effectively. It introduces SAP Crystal solutions as an affordable and scalable alternative that provides modular reporting and analytics tools to improve real-time decision making for growing businesses. Key benefits of SAP Crystal solutions include simplified licensing, ease of use, flexibility to add data sources and scale with business growth, and a path to transition to more advanced enterprise solutions. The document provides examples of how small companies have successfully used SAP Crystal solutions to generate customized reports, dashboards and analytics.

1. Small to midsize companies can tap
flexible, affordable, easy-to-use reporting
and analytics tools to improve their
real-time decision-making.
Tech Dossier
BI Just Got
SMBs
Smarter
for

2. Microsoft says copies of SQL Server
2008 that are run on a virtual machine
can only be transferred from server to
server every 90 days. Running copies
of the virtual machines can be moved
across licensed servers at any time,
according to Microsoft’s SQL Server
2008 Licensing Overview.
Such restrictions inevitably will wind up
triggering licensing events and thus add
hidden costs to the management of SQL
Server environments. And unexpected
expenses, such as increased licensing
fees, can put an SMB’s BI deployment
in jeopardy.
With budgets so tight, this is an unac-
ceptable outcome.
“IT budgets have been pressured like
every other budget, and staffing is con-
strained,” says Blair Wheadon, director
of product management in the Volume
Business Unit at SAP. “While business
intelligence is a requirement today to
be competitive, deployments are going
to have to be small, focused and fit for
purpose in order to satisfy the ROI goal.”
Seemingly Out of Reach
Organizations that are on a growth tra-
jectory don’t question the importance
of business intelligence and realize it
can be the remedy for flawed decision-
making based on inaccurate information
gathering. After all, they’ve seen their
competitors extract significant value
from having the ability to generate
detailed reports on every aspect of their
business, including human resources,
sales, finance and operations.
A 2009 Aberdeen Group report, titled
“BI for the SMB,” found that small and
midsize businesses were under certain
pressures that were driving them to
adopt business intelligence tools. Just
over half, 51%, of respondents to Ab-
erdeen’s survey cited a need to improve
the speed of access to relevant busi-
2 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
W
hen it comes down to it,
the benefits of business
intelligence (BI) are too great
to ignore. Timely, reliable, workable infor-
mation not only improves business per-
formance and helps companies capture
lucrative market opportunities before
competitors even know they exist, it also
helps businesses understand, analyze
and predict what’s occurring in the orga-
nization. All this, along with a 360-degree
view of the organization at any time — in
real time — are more than good reasons
to implement BI tools.
However, some upstart enterprises
have shied away from traditional BI tools
because of the cost and complexity.
Others who have dove in have found
that their peers were right to fear tradi-
tional BI and have suffered protracted
deployment cycles or have abandoned
their projects altogether.
The enormity of such software and
services threaten to consume much
of the limited time of business users
and IT. Yet the business intelligence
they afford is essential for companies
to remain competitive. They need
complete visibility into operations
so they can make clearer, faster and
smarter decisions.
Add to this conundrum that although
some vendors claim that business intel-
ligence is a free feature of one product,
users oftentimes have to buy another
product to get the full functionality.
For instance, Microsoft users have
to pay for SQL Server and SharePoint
Server to access the full dashboard
capabilities that are inherent to BI.
Even the actual licensing can be murky.
While many small and midsize businesses,
or SMBs, are eagerly adopting virtualiza-
tion as a way to get more out of their
server investments, some vendors restrict
their BI offerings in a virtual environment.
For example, each virtual processor used
by SQL Server in a virtual machine must
be licensed. So if users of SQL Server
Standard Edition or Workgroup Edition
want to beef up their BI application, they
must acquire an additional license for the
newly added virtual processor.
There are also limitations on moving
virtual machines among servers.

3. 3 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
ness data as a reason for deploying BI.
Other top drivers included the need to
gain visibility into key business process-
es and being able to distribute analytical
capability to more nontechnical users.
The outcome of BI, Aberdeen says, is
visibility into the business and avoiding
the pitfalls of not knowing what you don’t
know, making better use of organization-
al resources and managing costs better.
“Smart SMBs have to be able to look
ahead three to four years to anticipate
growth. BI is what can help them be
strategic about meeting immediate
targets and their long-term vision,”
Wheadon says.
Incredible value can be found from aggre-
gating data from multiple systems, result-
ing in what is referred to as mash-ups, he
adds. “You can suddenly gain insight into
critical issues such as why operations are
failing and orders are being sent out late
or wrong,” Wheadon says.
Keep It Simple
As noted earlier, there are numerous rea-
sons, including licensing, why traditional
BI tools can befuddle even the savviest
of small, midsize, and large businesses.
Another critical issue plaguing today’s BI
solutions is complexity.
If the software requires too much IT inter-
vention, not only will the deployment take
longer, but users will also shy away from
adoption. The less friendly the interface,
the less likely SMBs, in particular, will have
a high acceptance rate. Also, if the BI tool
is so intricate that it requires ongoing and
lengthy training sessions, then that will
also chew into the potential ROI. Growing
enterprises have so few resources that
they might bench BI rather than suffer a
significant loss in productivity.
Some businesses have tried to develop
their own BI tools but have quickly
found that approach to be overwhelming.
A BI Deployment Basics for SMBs
Here are eight tips to ensure that your business intelligence software deploy-
ment hits its mark.
1Create a cross-functional team. Select representatives from
each group that will be using the reporting and analytics tools, such as
accounting, sales and marketing. “Make sure that the people you choose are
influencers who currently generate or request reports, as they’ll be most inter-
ested in the project’s success,” says Brian Bischof, an independent consultant
and creator of the CrystalReportsBook.com Web site.
2 Prioritize your reports. Given the choice, most employees will opt
to run more rather than fewer reports. This could result in an immedi-
ate drain on your server, database and network resources. Instead, Bischof
recommends setting a limit for each department so it can determine which
reports are most important.
3 Clean up your data. The reports you generate from BI solutions
products will be useful only if the information is “clean.” So organiza-
tions should take the time to review their table structures and data definitions
before fully deploying the product. Look to see that fields are equal and that
duplicates and out-of-date information are scrubbed.
4 Educate users on the project. Chances are that up until now, a
handful of employees have been charged to create spreadsheet reports.
They might feel uneasy about a new tool that can automate some of their
responsibilities. Bischof recommends taking time to explain to these employ-
ees that the use of BI solutions tools will free them from mundane tasks to be
more strategic.
5 Centralize your reports. BI solutions tools provide a unique
opportunity for organizations to consolidate their reporting efforts and
inevitably save time and money. There will be less duplication, heightened ac-
curacy and increased visibility if you generate and store reports from a central
location. Users will be able to quickly access reports and make decisions
based on the same information, which inherently will improve outcomes.
6Target training. Gather either your cross-functional team or a set
of super-users to test-drive your BI application and study how they carry
out their workflow. Bischof encourages businesses to take this opportunity to
match the tools to the users. Some users might require access to a dedicated
BI server, while others will need only log-ons for the browser-based tools.
Tailor training sessions to these requirements. For instance, you don’t want to
send casual business users to an all-day, off-site seminar when a simple, two-
hour in-house session would get them up to speed.
7 Develop a feedback loop. As you delve into your BI deployment,
you’ll want to open the communication lines to receive feedback from
your influencers and casual users. You can give them access to your team
via a Web link, solicit comments through e-mail or have regular face-to-face
meetings that gauge the acceptance of the new tools.
8 Deploy your project in phases. It’s critical to start slowly with
reporting and analytics tools, Bischof says. Users need time to get used
to the interface, and project leaders need the chance to monitor the accuracy
of initial reports. Beginning with a small percentage of reports will help make
the spreadsheet conversion and fine-tuning processes more manageable
and create a more solid foundation for success.

4. 4 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
With each new data source, they have to
re-code, re-test and re-deploy their soft-
ware. IT and developers have been unable
to keep up with the increased demand to
add data to report on and analyze.
Even off-the-shelf packages have
caused setbacks because they require
several tools to do a single job – for
example, Microsoft’s requirement that
businesses purchase SQL Server and
SharePoint. They also don’t always scale
well. Although most businesses enjoy
some type of growth in users and data
over their lifetime, traditional BI software
often does not accommodate this likeli-
hood. Instead, users must abandon the
tools they spent so long deploying and
start over with enterprise-level tools,
which are more costly and complex.
that enables growing organizations to
run reports and analyze data from a
number of databases without overbur-
dening IT. A modular and sophisticated
set of reporting and analytics tools
empowers users to create their own,
customized reports and, if necessary,
offer business partners and customers
secure access to them.
Any organization can securely share,
schedule and deliver interactive reports
over the Web, via e-mail or through
Microsoft Office documents with Crystal
solutions’ easy-to-use components.
Users can also turn data contained
in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets into
presentation-worthy, interactive visual
charts and dashboards. A new addition
to the SAP Crystal solutions family,
Design
Reports
Embed
Reports &
Visualizations
Design
Dashboards &
Visualizations
Model What-if
Scenarios
Share Reports
& Dashboards
View & Explore
Reports
Access Multiple
Data Sources
SAP Crystal Reports
SAP Crystal Reports
Server
SAP Crystal Reports
Server, OEM Edition
SAP Crystal Reports
Runtime Server License
SAP Crystal Reports
Visual Design, Package
SAP Crystal Reports
Viewer
SAP Crystal Reports, ver-
sion for Visual Studio .NET
SAP Crystal Reports,
Version for Eclipse
SAP Crystal Dashboard
Design
SAP Crystal
Presentation Design
BI On Demand
Compare SAP Crystal Solutions
4
4 4
4 4
44 4 4 4
44 4 4
44 4 4
4 4 4 4
44 44 4 44
44 44 4 44
44 444
4 44
These obstacles create more headaches
for growing companies to manage and,
unfortunately, can result in wasted time
and money.
The Way BI Should Be
Reporting and analytics don’t have to
be difficult or less than optimal for small
and midsize businesses. SAP Crystal
solutions provides the antidote to the
problems mentioned above.
“Businesses should be able to start with
the size tool that’s right for them and add
on as they grow,” Wheadon says.
SAP Crystal solutions is an affordable
and scalable software product portfolio

5. 5 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
SAP Crystal Reports Viewer lets
anyone view a SAP Crystal Report for
free. SAP Crystal Dashboard Design
transforms complex data into a compre-
hensive dashboard. Users can create
these dashboards from Microsoft Excel
or a live data source and export them
to a familiar format, such as Microsoft
Office or Adobe PDF files.
SAP Crystal solutions is compliant with
Microsoft’s products so that businesses
don’t have to rip and replace their current
infrastructure. They also can combine
data to create business-critical reports
without having to do heavyweight inte-
gration. “They can perform lightweight
data mash-ups that produce revenue-
generating results,” Wheadon says.
Licensing is also much simpler with SAP
Crystal solutions, as it is tailored to be
virtualization-friendly. Instead of penal-
izing businesses for using more virtual
processing power, SAP has a concurrent
licensing program that is more flexible
and allows users to access the system
as needed.
While many business intelligence
products are server-centric, SAP Crystal
solutions offers a mix of server, Web
and desktop components that give busi-
nesses a choice of how best to address
their users’ needs. For example, reports
are centralized on a server so that orga-
nizations, large and small, can prevent
duplication and can carry out logging
and auditing for security and compli-
ance. At the same time, SAP Interactive
Analysis is a lightweight, easy-to-install
desktop tool that acts as a complement
to dashboards and allows IT to offer
knowledge workers enterprise-class
analytics without having to roll out and
manage a complex product suite.
Perhaps most important, SAP Crystal so-
lutions is built upon the same technology
foundation as SAP’s enterprise offerings,
so when businesses are ready to transi-
tion to that class of product, they will be
able to transfer whatever work they’ve
already done. “All the content that you’ve
created — dashboards, reports, etc. —
SAP Interactive Analysis, gives any
business user an analytical query tool
to answer unanticipated questions in a
self-service environment.
The difference: Instead of BI being a
feature of SAP Crystal solutions, it is the
core competency of the whole product
portfolio. Every aspect of the software
lineup is designed especially for re-
porting and analytics so that growing
organizations can enjoy a highly efficient,
cost-effective approach to business intel-
ligence. Such organizations can deliver
increasing amounts of data in a manage-
able and relevant format.
Because many businesses are familiar
with Microsoft Excel, SAP Crystal solu-
tions has been designed with a similar
look and feel. Users will recognize and
be comfortable in the environment,
which will guarantee optimal adoption
rates. The solution also has been
developed to be self-service so that IT
has minimal involvement.
The SAP Crystal solutions family fea-
tures products that enable businesses
to design reports, visualize data, analyze
data, and manage and share reports
and dashboards.
SAP Crystal Reports and SAP
Crystal Reports Server work in
tandem so that users can create,
customize, schedule and share inter-
active reports from industry-standard
data sources such as Excel, XML, Web
Services and SQL Server. Reports can be
delivered to users or business partners
and customers via the Web, e-mail, PDF
or in Microsoft Office documents. This
user-level control eliminates a lot of the
intervention typically required by IT.
“While business intelligence is a requirement today to be competitive,
deployments are going to have to be small, focused, and fit for
purpose in order to satisfy the ROI goal.” — Blair Wheadon, SAP
The SAP Crystal Presentation
Design is business-user friendly, and
it changes static Excel-based spread-
sheets into exciting, intuitive, interactive
charts and engaging what-if scenarios.
SAP Interactive Analysis is the
brand-new component that supplies
businesses with analytics in an easy-
to-use manner. Users can now do on-
the-fly queries and what-if scenarios to
gain the same type of insight as their
larger competitors.

6. the easy-to-use tool to expand its reach.
For example, the company included
critical information such as notification
of late shipments and short shipments
in sales order reports. In addition, it
launched an Executive Information Por-
tal via SAP Crystal Reports Server that
contains key executive management
reports. SAP Crystal Reports Server also
proactively scans corporate data for
areas that require decisions and action.
Now, rather than a siloed approach to
decision-making, users are challenged
to think about how their decisions
impact the company as a whole. This
change has led to increased profitability,
reduced and redeployed head count,
and overall organizational effectiveness.
For longtime user TIB Bank, in Home-
stead, Fla., SAP Crystal Reports provides
a simple way to create and update
hundreds of reports per month. These
include custom reports that are created
primarily for internal, state and federal
audits that are conducted regularly with-
in the banking institution. SAP Crystal
Reports Server acts as a central hub
where reports can be securely man-
aged. Reports, which are culled from the
bank’s other systems and databases,
are scheduled automatically, so IT does
not have to manage the process and
users can easily access the information
when they need it.
These are just a few examples of how
the SAP Crystal solutions portfolio
of products has paved the way for
businesses to be competitive in their
markets. Affordability, ease of use and
flexibility make SAP Crystal solutions
the best option for growing organiza-
tions looking to succeed with business
intelligence.
For more information about the SAP
Crystal solutions portfolio: The Clear
Path to Business Intelligence:Optimize
Decisions with SAP Crystal Solutions
can all be imported into our enterprise
products so you get the most from your
investment,” Wheadon says.
In fact, organizations enjoy a lower total
cost of ownership and increase flexibility
because, unlike traditional products,
SAP Crystal solutions combines report-
ing and dashboarding on a single server.
SAP Crystal solutions is also unique
because organizations can purchase the
various components when they need
them instead of having to commit to an
overpriced monolithic package.
SAP Crystal Solutions
in Action
For over 15 years, SAP Crystal Reports
software has helped business users
and IT departments from around the
world achieve richer insight and greater
productivity. With millions of active users
and deployments in organizations of all
sizes and across all industries, SAP Crys-
tal Reports is widely recognized as the de
facto standard for reporting today.
Already, many small and midsize
organizations have benefitted from the
simplicity and sophistication of SAP
Crystal solutions. Growing companies
from various industries have gained a
new understanding of their business
processes and have been able to im-
prove them and increase revenue.
Case in point: The city of Kent, Wash-
ington expected to expand the number
of residents needing its services from
88,000 to 120,000 and could not rely on
its legacy custom reporting tool. The
growing organization wanted a reporting
and analytics tool that allowed business
users to easily create reports and then
automatically and securely distribute
them to staff. For instance, they gener-
ated status reports, inspection reports,
usage reports, fee reports and permit
reports. Users needed to be able to
set up, schedule and deliver them to
managers, inspectors, firefighters police,
customer service, maintenance and
other workers via e-mail, printer or FTP.
They also wanted a tool that would
allow them to send reports to outside
agencies over e-mail or FTP.
With SAP Crystal Reports Server, the
city was able to successfully achieve
these goals and provide a stable, scal-
able solution that stores all reports in
a centralized location. There is less
duplication, and everyone is using the
most current version of a report to make
critical decisions.
At Twin City Foods, Inc., a private-label
frozen vegetable packing company,
nearly all information was paper-based,
so there was no real-time visibility into
operations. Decisions were isolated and
lacked a big-picture aspect.
The company wanted to make its data
actionable, so they introduced SAP
Crystal Reports. To start, Twin City
Foods mimicked its existing reports, but
soon became comfortable enough with
6 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
t Watch
video!

7. Additional Reading on BI and SMBs: Lessons from the Big Guys
5 BI Potholes to Bypass By Julia King
7 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
Business intelligence might be a maturing
technology, but it’s far from hassle-free.
Tedious technology issues, including the
need for comprehensive data cleansing
and integrating incompatible computer
systems, are still a big part of nearly all BI
projects. But it’s the planning, return on
investment and people issues that users
continue to count among their biggest BI
problem areas. Here, five IT executives
map out their strategies for navigating
around user resistance and resentment,
creating quick ROI wins and managing
overenthusiastic vendors.
1. Setting User
Expectations Too High.
One of the earliest and easiest-to-hit
potholes on the road to BI success is
what Danny Siegel describes as the
radical variance between BI software
applications that are functionally rich
and very pretty, and the reality of what
can be accomplished with the data a
company has to work with. People dig
themselves a hole by demonstrating
next-gen capabilities to a user com-
munity that doesn’t even have the data
to get into standard reporting, says
Siegel, director of data warehousing and
business intelligence at New York-based
Pfizer Inc.
Part of the problem lies in how
vendors make their case to IT executives
during the software selection process.
Those presentations tend to be highly
structured with as much visual appeal
as possible, because they’re trying to
sell business users, Siegel says.
But the reality is that the true require-
ments are not around what’s visually ap-
pealing. They’re around getting complex
reports turned into something that’s
navigable, he adds. It’s block-and-tackle
reporting that’s needed.
Allowing a vendor to show end users
a BI system that’s replete with color
charts, graphs and tables is a near guar-
antee of user dissatisfaction with the
system that ultimately gets implement-
ed. One way around that pothole, Siegel
says, is to insist that vendors work with
actual company data during all software
demos.
I give the vendor live data with all of
its vagaries, inaccuracies and dirt, he
says. Sure, we want a system to be visu-
ally appealing, but we also want it to be
meaningful. Piloting with your vendors is
important because you’re showing your
users what can [actually] be achieved.
2. Putting the Right Tools
in the Wrong Hands.
Front-line managers, rather than execu-
tives, are most often responsible for
worker productivity and daily sales.
BI tools can help boost both. But too
often, companies first give BI tools to
executives, who then push down policy
changes, observes Robert Fort, CIO
at Virgin Entertainment Group Inc. in
Los Angeles.
Virgin, which operates 13 mega­stores
at prime locations such as Hollywood
Boulevard and Times Square, first
started its BI project in its stores. You
can’t manage what you don’t measure,
Fort says, which is why the company
provides its store managers with the
most accurate and up-to-date sales
information available. Store manag-
ers access the BI system, known as
Crescendo, via a Web-based portal.
Traffic and sales information is pulled in
every 15 minutes, Fort says. His group
has developed software-based report
templates so store managers can point
and click their way through Crescendo
to learn things like a store’s browser-
to-buyer conversion rate, its average
hourly sales rate and how those rates
compare to other stores rates or even
their own year-ago figures.
We went back 18 weeks later and
measured sales lift, Fort says, adding
that 20% of the stores overall sales
increase during that period was directly
attributable to the BI system.
We definitely have changed the
culture in stores, Fort says. They’re held
more accountable, and they operate
more in real time. They can see trends in
the middle of the day and correct them.
The bottom line, he says, is this: If
you put tools in the hands of people
who clearly want to be making a dif-
ference and make them user-friendly,
they’ll run with it.
3. Dishing Up Data, Then
Leaving Users to Figure Out
How to Take Action.
Successful BI is all about providing users
with actionable information, not just
data, says Jim Lollar, Ford Motor Co’s
systems manager for global warranty
operations.
When the automaker launched
its Web-based warranty portal five
years ago, the goal was to give Ford’s
10,000 dealers worldwide the abil-
ity to quickly identify their warranty
problems and see how their costs for
warranty repairs measured up against
corporate parameters. Previously, they
had received the information in a paper
report known as the 126 Report. This
tabular report showed how a dealer’s
performance numbers compared with
those of other dealers in their geo-
graphic regions. Next, the automaker
added six months of rolling data and
applied statistical process controls to
identify abnormal performance. Deal-
ers could pull it down on demand from
the Web, Lollar explains.
The upshot: Dealers could see where
they had problems and compare their
performance against their peers. Prob-
lem was, that didn’t really help them fix

8. problems or improve performance.
Now, Collar’s group also provides
dealers with various diagnostic ca-
pabilities and how-to manuals, plus
dashboard and drill-down capabilities
that point to specific conditions that
might be contributing to performance
problems.
Before, we never tried to help dealers
with how to fix the problem. The report
would have a variance number with a
condition code beside it, and that’s all
we gave them, says Lollar. The message
was ‘Here you have a problem; figure it
out’, he says. Now, we deliver diagnostic
capabilities and how-to manuals. The
system also lets dealers drill down to
[more detailed] sections about repairs
and costs.
Lollar says the system has been an
overwhelming success. Information is
now delivered in 15 languages to dealers
worldwide. And only a very, very small
percentage of dealers get to an audit for
performance reasons, he says.
4. Training BI Users at the
Start of the Project, Then
Never Again.
Jefferson Regional Medical Center in
Pine Bluff, Ark., provides its administra-
tive and clinical staffers with a self-
service, Web-based portal for quickly
finding specific information on patients,
insurance reimbursements, staff pro-
ductivity, admission trends and more.
Virtually all operational data from every
department from materials manage-
ment to pharmaceuticals is accessible
via the portal. That’s the good news.
The challenge is that we’re all looking
at the same picture, but everyone sees
different things, says Morie Meh­you,
assistant vice president, information
management and decision support
at the hospital, the fourth largest in
Arkansas. Six years ago, when Jefferson
first implemented the system, Mehyou
says, the medical center came up with
a glossary of definitions for key terms,
such as patient. But over time and under
varying conditions, such definitions can
get murky and/or users can interpret
them differently. We have accountants,
nurse managers and supply managers
all seeing different things in the same
data, says Mehyou. For example, an
administrator viewing the patient census
data might conclude that a certain
medical department should operate
only 11.5 hours a day. But the medical
department might disagree, counter-
ing that administrators didn’t take into
consideration mitigating factors such as
the fact that nine of its 10 patients were
very sick or that one staffer left early on
that particular day.
It’s a continuous education with defi-
nitions. You have to always explain the
intent and purpose [of all definitions],
and if there are any caveats, they have
to be apparent, says Mehyou. Every
time we have a new manager, I take the
time to bring them up to speed to have
consistency in reports. It’s a language
you have to start talking to people.
Ever-changing government, medical
and financial regulations also affect BI
definitions. Every time we have a chal-
lenge, we have to come up with another
way to slice data and give another ex-
planation of what that data is all about,
Mehyou notes.
5. Going for the Quick Win
and Not Planning for the
Long Term.
The District of Columbia’s Court Ser-
vices and Offender Supervision Agency
needed to centralize all of its mission-
critical information so it could compare
the performance of various departments
and realign its public safety resources
across the city’s eight wards.
We had different versions of the
truth floating around, says Calvin John-
son, director of the agency’s office of
research and evaluation. We had one
type of report from finance, another
from research and a third from opera-
tions, which didn’t jibe well, especially
because we’re in the business of public
safety. As part of the upfront require-
ments-gathering process, Johnson and
his team asked users in different focus
groups for their three most pressing
needs. We didn’t make promises, but
we asked, ‘Where are your three biggest
pains?’ he recalls.
All told, he gathered about 45 urgent
requirements many of them re­dundant.
When you boiled it all down, it came to
five to seven things, Johnson says. His
team delivered them all fast.
We did not follow best practices, but
we developed quick and clean reports
that users could access via a portal on
a regular basis. We ran these jobs every
day and made the information accessi-
ble. It was low-cost but big ROI, he says.
You give them something they can
use right away, Johnson advises. People
don’t care about pretty. Develop some-
thing, even if it’s minimal. Develop it,
and let people see where you’re going.
But at the same time, he says it’s
critical to think long term, especially in
terms of how the IT infrastructure will
support BI several years in the future.
Most BI systems undoubtedly will have
grown to support features that were not
in the original scope, Johnson says.
At the D.C. agency, for example,
GIS capabilities are now part of the BI
project plan.
A lot of the data we deal with is
spatial where people live, where crimes
take place, Johnson explains. Now, when
a homicide takes place, a case worker
can pull up a list of all previous offenders,
based on the crime they’ve committed,
in a 500-yard radius. Or when staffers are
going to be in a certain area of the city,
they can find the names and addresses
of offenders in that area and conduct
random home visits.
This is the bottom line, says Johnson:
You’ve got to develop an IT architecture
not for where you are now, but for where
you want to be five years from now.
Reprinted from Computerworld n
8 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs

9. 9 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
Additional Reading on BI and SMBs: Best Practices
What to look for in BI Products
When selecting business intelligence
products, it’s important to consider
other factors in addition to specific
product features—such as ease-of-use,
ease-of-implementation and administra-
tion, scalability, user interface options,
and how well it integrates into your
company’s existing and future platform
environment. Among the most impor-
tant of these are:
n An integrated product suite with
a range of capabilities that your
company can deploy as needed. As
your company grows, it should not
outgrow the capabilities of its BI ven-
dor. In addition, individual users may
require different capabilities, and an
integrated product suite provides the
greatest deployment flexibility.
n The scalability to handle an increased
user base as your organization grows
and usage increases. As your organi-
zation gains experience with BI and
its usefulness becomes evident, it’s
quite likely that its usage will quickly
spread.
n Data quality functionality to ensure a
trustworthy data foundation so that
your company is analyzing accu-
rate, consistent, and complete data.
High-quality data is a requirement for
high-quality decisions, and it avoids
the problems associated with having
“multiple versions of the truth.”
n The ability to access and integrate
a wide variety of disparate data
sources. Although many companies
initially run their analyses against in-
dividual systems, the time will come
when data from several sources will
be needed to see the total picture,
and a product suite that includes
data integration technology and the
ability to have the data appear as if
it were located in a single source will
allow you to easily accomplish this.
n Integration with your desktop soft-
ware, in particular Microsoft Office.
This will allow users to complement
their BI with their familiar desktop
tools and reduce your organization’s
training requirements.
n Support for multiple operating sys-
tems, not just Windows, will allow
your IT department to keep your fu-
ture options open and not constrain
your organization to a single operat-
ing system. Linux is rapidly growing
in importance, and your BI products
should support it.
Ease of initial installation and deploy-
ment, as well as ease of adding ad-
ditional users will not only make it
easier to quickly add new users, but
will increase the productivity of your IT
department.
n Powerful but easy-to-use administra-
tion tools will allow your IT depart-
ment to control “who can access
what” and provide a level of security
and privacy that’s simply not possible
in a “spreadsheet-only” environment.
Your data is an organizational asset
that your BI products should help
you protect, while allowing those
that need to analyze it to do so
effectively.
n Robust report cataloging and distri-
bution capabilities that allow autho-
rized business users to receive their
analyses on both an upon-request
and periodic-subscription basis. The
capability to alert users when certain
events or value thresholds occur is
also important.
n The ability to deliver reports to a
wide variety of desktop and mobile
devices, with content formatted
to match the capabilities of these
devices.
n Strong search capabilities that
facilitate finding needed information
and locating relevant analyses and
reports.
n Business users speak in business
terms, and BI tools should allow them
to continue to do so. A product suite
with a semantic layer transparently
isolates users from underlying techni-
cal complexities and allows them to
focus on their business issues, not
technical software details. For users
that need to know where data was
sourced from and the underlying
formulas (e.g., how are “gross profit”
and “net profit” computed?), data
lineage details should also be readily
available.
Reprinted from: SAP/ Business Objects:
Business Intelligence: The Definitive
Guide For Mid-Size Organizations n

10. 10 Tech dossier: BI Just Got Smarter for SMBs
Additional Reading on BI and SMBs: Best Practices
What to look for in BI Vendor
When selecting a business intelligence
vendor, it’s important to consider many
factors—including vendor experience,
reputation, and stability—as well as its
professional services capabilities and
the quality and strength of its partner-
ships. Among the most important of
these are:
n Consider a vendor’s education and
training capabilities. While many ven-
dors offer on-site and in-house train-
ing, a few have developed self-paced
computer-based training that can
assist new users in getting started or
help experienced users quickly mas-
ter advanced product capabilities.
n Select a vendor with a proven track
record and a history of successful
growth—both in revenues and in
capabilities. Solid growth and profit-
ability indicates both astute manage-
ment and product acceptance. It
allows the vendor to better serve its
customers and invest in the future.
Choose a vendor that’s large enough
to retain its independence.
n A vendor with a history of acquiring
complementary technology and suc-
cessfully integrating it with its own
is likely to be able to quickly react to
new market demands and be able to
supply the technology your company
needs—both now and in the future.
n Seek out a vendor with a history of
vision and innovation. A vendor with
a proven track record of innovation
and industry leadership is likely not
only to meet the current needs of
its customers but also to anticipate
and meet their future requirements
as well.
n As BI usage increases, it’s likely
that your organization will deploy it
against additional systems and ad-
ditional databases. While a database
vendor may offer its own proprietary
BI technology, what happens when
your organization decides to use an-
other database? A major advantage
of choosing a BI specialist as your
BI vendor is its ability to work with a
wide variety of data sources
Consider the vendor’s product delivery
options. While many vendors will only
allow you to license their products to
run on your company’s servers, others
also provide “on-demand” or software
as a service (SaaS) options—whereby
the vendor hosts the software on its
own servers, and organizations use it
through their web browsers. The SaaS
model can be especially appealing to
small companies that wish to minimize
upfront startup costs, while still having
the ability to bring the software in-house
at a future time when it would make
economic sense.
n A vendor with a large cadre of part-
ners—both software vendors and
consultants—will prove invaluable.
One measure of “openness” is the
number of other software products
that a BI tool works with, and a ven-
dor that actively encourages partner-
ships is likely to have little problem
integrating its technology with your
current and future software environ-
ments. Vendors with a strong base
of consulting partners make it easier
to find outside expertise should
your organization have special
requirements.
n A vendor with a product set that
provides your organization with a
strong growth path and works in
both operational systems and data
warehousing environments will pro-
vide maximum deployment flexibility.
n Your organization will likely grow
and expand. It may not be a giant
today, but it could be one tomorrow.
Choose a vendor that has a success-
ful track record and extensive experi-
ence with organizations of all sizes.•
If you expect to someday operate on
an international scale, a vendor with
a multinational presence is highly
desirable.
Reprinted from: SAP/ Business Objects:
Business Intelligence: The Definitive
Guide For Mid-Size Organizations n