With the availability of lower-cost offerings, and a user base more educated about what business intelligence is and can do for them, BI is becoming an understandable, usable and affordable initiative for small to midsized businesses and CPA firms.

Traditionally, resellers and internal IT staffs have been responsible for deciphering and implementing BI, usually at a larger, enterprise level and at a high cost for solutions that can run in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. While larger organizations have embraced BI, small and midsized businesses had, for the most part, shied away due to additional costs for licensing and training and the complexities of maintaining one more application.

Lately, however there are signs of change.

A recent survey from tech concern Gartner of 1,500 chief information officers found that even with tight technology budgets and a troubled economy, business intelligence remains among the top spending priorities.

At its most basic level, business intelligence provides historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of BI technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, and predictive analytics.

BI AS A PROFIT TOOL

According to high-profile technology consultants like Randy Johnston, in a down economy the ability to make decisions sooner rather than later can be the difference between reaching sales goals and retaining clients or customers, or not.

"It is such a great time for BI right now, people are trying to do the right things and better things with the resources they have," said Johnston "It lets you see what's working, what's not, and what you should do that you're not. In this economy, that is so important."

Johnston claims that attendance at his own BI training and educational seminars has increased "four-fold" over the past few years and that the most important factor for BI's wider adoption has been seeing the increased revenue potential, when used both internally and externally.

For resellers and CPA firms alike, understanding BI and showing their clients how they can potentially make more money - in many cases by getting "intelligence" reports from the ERP and CRM systems they already have - can be a boon for their own business.

"Especially if you are a CPA firm, even going with low-end products, you can have an exceptionally high value-add. Many do compliance work already; this is a big 'in' for them (to get additional revenue for BI work), plus it lets CPAs leverage their financial expertise in a big way," said Johnston.

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