Do your competitors know something about mining data that you don’t?

Technology – and the expertise to wield it effectively – have offered an enormous leveling advantage for small and mid-sized enterprises looking for ways to compete better and grow faster in their respective business environments. For the first time size no longer matters. What matters is having access to solid, actionable information that can be used for strategic decision-making so you can upgrade from “intuition” to solid science when it comes to making decisions that affect your business.

Make no mistake; it’s a virtual certainty that data enterprise integration – coordinating the automatic mining and analysis of data as part of an overall Business Intelligence system -- will continue to grow in importance to the point that competing without it will be as unthinkable as having a business that foregoes the use of telephones. You may not know that you need BI expertise at the moment but it’s only a matter of time–a short matter of time – until you do.

Business Intelligence consists of three primary elements:

• A repository for data. This takes the form of a relational database acquired from all sources, both internal and external to the company. An effective data repository enables immediate access to information for scientific decision-making purposes.
• A directory for the data. Having mountains of data is of no use to anyone if people don’t know how to use it. Data directories, also known as "metadata" are special repositories designed to efficiently enable end users to utilize collected data effectively and efficiently
• BI software. Whether custom-built or off-the-shelf, you’ll need computer applications that can collect end-user requests, retrieve the data and present the required information seamlessly.

The solution for many companies is brining in a BI consultant able to break down large complicated projects into smaller units, each of which can be prioritized for return on investment and completed in as little as 90 days. Which means, within 3 months you can be up and running with one of the most powerful tools a business can have these days. Of course, you can always wait until your IT folks aren’t so busy putting out fires caused by your growth. Chances are good your competitors won’t choose to wait that long. For more information about data enterprise integration as part of an overall BI systems solution, a good place to start is The Worcester Group, Inc. You can visit them at www.worcestergroupinc.com.