Are you really different?

Business Intelligence vendors create their products as 'toolsets' - platforms that let you deal with the unique reporting requirements of your business. Instead of providing a collection of fixed reports and metrics, they provide an opportunity for you to create your own reporting and metrics environment from scratch. That way, all of the reports are specific to your business.

So what's the problem with this? Well for starters, not every leader of an SMB has a clear understanding of what Business Intelligence can do for them. Though they really know their business operationally, they're not always sure what to measure and how it can be used to improve things. I don't know how many times I've met with prospective clients who have asked very early on for some samples of what other businesses are doing. They're really looking for a way to jumpstart the process.

Here's the question then - When considering a BI approach for your business, how important is it to have something that is ready out-of-the-box? Is it better to buy a toolset that let's you build from the ground up, or would it be preferable to have some content that is ready to go right away?

My belief is that, though all companies have their own unique aspects, there are also a lot of similarities. And with these similarities, there are a lot of standard metrics to monitor and analyses to be performed. Regardless of the business model, there will be some form of 'revenue', some 'customers' and obviously some 'vendors' (and lots of other similarities). It's probably safe to say that most businesses share about an 80% commonality. Wouldn't it be good if the 80% was ready out of the box? That way you could use the time saved to focus on addressing the other 20% more effectively.