What "The Buffer Zone" Tells Us About Why Mid-Market Companies Need BI More Than Enterprises

Business intelligence, or BI, has the reputation of being largely the domain of enterprises. For many years, it was only the industry giants that had the money and resources to support the IT infrastructure needed to deploy and maintain BI. After all, it was these companies that had massive volumes of data, and therefore the most to gain from transforming it into actionable insights.

Right? While this is a widely held view, and many mid-sized organizations have been slow to jump on board the BI bandwagon, the truth is they have more reasons to adopt BI than many enterprises.

What is different is the buffer zone. Enterprises usually spread their business across many different markets, product lines, and geographies. If analytics show a product line is not performing, there are many options available - focus on another product line, analyze performance by geography, adjust project initiatives, and reshuffle funds.

Mid-sized businesses don't have this discretionary power. Many are focused on a single geography, or a single product line. If analytics show a product is not performing, the leadership must change course quickly and decisively based on available data.  There is much less room to move to cut costs, and the results can be more critical, dramatic, and long-term.

Likewise, there is often a fundamental difference in ownership between enterprise and mid-sized businesses, with enterprises usually having more complex arrangements for boards, shareholders, and regulatory reporting. However, no matter how big an organization, management information is the same. Timely and accurate data is required across the organization to make sound decisions.

As recent economic woes prove, mid-market companies can be more fragile than their enterprise counterparts. Funds in smaller businesses are defined around the owner, not a publicly listed ...