How Intelligent Is It To Hire A Business Intelligence Consultant?

If someone were to ask you to name your business’ most significant assets, chances are “Business Intelligence” (BI) wouldn’t register high on the list. But actionable information is the essential ingredient in strategic decision making, a primary determiner of an organization’s profitability and growth. Ironically, it’s also the factor paid least attention to by owners scurrying for profitability and growth.

We find this particularly true for small and midsize companies currently experiencing rapid expansion. Frequently, that growth strains their information technology capabilities. And as information is mined from data hidden deep away within those systems, it becomes inadequate to contend with expanding competitive circumstances. The engine that produced the growth in the first place sputters and stalls.

To the rescue? Business intelligence consulting companies. Putting together the business intelligence systems required to stay afloat in a bigger pond isn’t easy, especially when IT personnel are stretched thin. Business Intelligence Consultants live this stuff. And that’s good. Because you don’t want to have to learn how to build a multi-dimensional data warehouse that extracts information from flat files, object, relational and hierarchical databases, reorganizing and integrating it for optimal analysis and retrieval.

Some other good reasons to hire a consultant to build your BI application?

1. Cross pollination. Consultants, by nature, jump from company to company, industry to industry. Along the way they pick up information – about what’s worked for others and how it might apply to you
2. Application expertise. There’s a lot of software out there. Sometimes the right “one” is really a combination of two or more. Would you know which is right and which isn’t? The BI consultant’s experience with these products can guide you quickly to the right choice.
3. Better learning curve. It would take you much more time to learn the relevant aspects of business intelligence than it would take a BI consultant to learn the relevant aspects of your business.
4. Costs. You may be able to capitalize business intelligence consulting costs related to a BI initiative, reducing the bottom line impact of current expenses.

Laying The Foundation For A Productive BI System

Hiring a BI consultant to help build and implement your data warehouse makes it all the more likely you’ll be able to reap the bounty of a well­designed system much sooner. You’ll want data consistency and the flexibility to generate customized analyses in order to support strategic, as well as day­to­day decision making. A well­structured data warehouse should end up increasing your productivity while lowering your computing costs.

It isn’t easy turning an overwhelmingly complicated process accessible only to very specialized users into user-friendly system accessible and comprehensible to everyone. But that’s what business intelligence consulting is for. Once you’ve decided to add business intelligence to your arsenal, contact the Worcester Group to discuss what we can do for you.