We are in the beginning stage of democratization of business software which will empower companies without million dollar IT budget to have access to productivity enhancing business software, including business intelligence software, and reap the fruits of technology advancement.
Inside Information Age, we have seen the democratization of computers in the 1970s, started by Apple and then followed by IBM/Microsoft. Before that, computers were only affordable and used by large corporations. They were huge mainframes in icon computer rooms, maintained as a result of trained staffs in white coats. The personal computer revolution claimed that computers may be used by mere mortals, personal individuals, and small businesses, and computers were not the privilege of only the big institutions.We also saw that democratization of networked computers in the 1990s with the World wide web revolution. Before the wide-spread associated with Internet, only in businesses the computer are networked together and share information, and the network is maintained by skilled IT staffs. Along with the Internet, average Joes can easily connect their computer to the vast network and access almost the complete human knowledge.
We are beginning to see the democratization of business software. In the past, only corporations with million dollar IT budget are able to ERP, CRM, business intelligence or other kinds of business enterprise software. Software as a service (SaaS) together with cloud computing are changing that right before our eyes and allowing for small to medium size companies to increase their performance and competition by incorporating these technology solutions into their business.I believe we are still at first stage of this revolution that empowers companies with limited IT resources to have access to productivity enhancing business software, and reap the fruits of technology advancement.Various studies show that will business intelligence gathering and analysis is important for companies of all sizes to get maximum a competitive edge, but business intelligence solutions can be extremely expensive to implement. With costs for any software, infrastructure, customization, inclusion, training, and IT resources, the total cost is often in six digits or higher, and making it unattainable for some small companies.
For a company intelligence solution to be affordable, it needs to be “simplified” so it necessitates minimum IT involvement together with minimum users training. This requires an entirely different process from traditional business learning ability software, and should be designed in the ground-up for non-techies. To reduce the cost, the software should be easy to deploy and need no or minimum development or implementation effort from it. And for end-users to perform business intelligence data mining / ad-hoc reporting, it needs to be “smart” at understanding the data model and the info, mapping the data mining request to the data model, and retrieving the relevant and correct data. The software needs to be flexible, adaptive, and can learn from experiences, so the end-users can do data mining and company intelligence analysis quickly using their business knowledge.
With such an affordable and easy-to-use company intelligence software, business intelligence gathering and analysis can finally be used by mere mortals, non-public individuals, and small agencies, and business intelligence would no longer be the privilege with big institutions.
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