Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) - Business Management

Internal Code: MAS6337

Business Management:

It is considered that small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) form part of the primary providers of business and economy of a nation (Vercellis, 2011). The introduction of a new technology called Business Intelligence has changed the landscape of modern businesses. BI refers to technologies, application, and practices for collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business information. The principal purpose of this application is to provide support for better decision making. Further, to grow these SMEs, it is essential to make them update or adopt new technologies so they can function more efficiently. When talking about a South African business intelligence, additional layers are to be considered. As large corporations are getting more digitally mature within segments of the market, at the same time smaller businesses are struggling to grow or turning to untapped emerging markets which have little or non-existence of data footprints (Best and Kahn, 2016:66). Businesses are seeking out both distinctive ways for sourcing data and looking for new ways of implementing this data for solving their particular problems. Further, it has been identified that the SMEs in South Africa are facing various challenges regarding their operation and developments. Thus, the adoption of advanced Business Intelligence systems in the SMEs could aid in solving their problems regarding analysis and financing. For SMEs, adapting to the BI solutions such as Tableau, QlikView, PowerBI or IBM Cognos can enhance the chance for the SME firm to survive and remain competitive in the market (Williams and Williams, 2010:25). Question: 1) To identify and evaluate key fundamental features of IBM Cognos that can address SMEs data needs to improve decision-making. 2) What are the key fundamental features of IBM Cognos that can address the data needs of SMEs? 3) What are the critical data needs for SMEs looking to remain sustainable and competitive? 4) Which affordable features found in IBM Cognos can address the business needs of SMEs? 5) How can SMEs conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the acquisition of a BI tool?