Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study

Raghavendra Raj, Shun Ha Sylvia Wong and Anthony J. Beaumont

School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, U.K.

Keywords: Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse, Microsoft BI, SME.

Abstract: Business Intelligence (BI) leverages the usefulness of existing information. It equips business users with
relevant information to perform various analyses to make key business decisions. Over the last two decades,
BI has become a core strategy for the growth of many companies, in particular large corporations. However,
studies show that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lag behind in implementation and
exploitation of BI solutions. To stay ahead of the competition, SMEs must be able to monitor and
effectively use all of their resources, in particular information resources, to assist them in making important
business decisions. In this paper, we examine the challenges such as lack of technical expertise and limited
budget when implementing a BI solution within an SME in the UK. In light of our experiences in tackling
these issues, we discuss how these challenges can be overcome through applying various tools and
strategies and the potential benefits.

1 INTRODUCTION 1989. Negash and Gray (2003) defined BI systems

as systems which “combine data gathering, data
In the last couple of decades, regardless of the size, storage, and knowledge management with analytical
companies have generated large volumes of data tools to present complex and competitive
from internal and external environments. The ability information to planners and decision-makers”. Such
to efficiently manage, access and analyse large, systems typically utilise data from a centralised data
though seemingly unrelated, volumes of data is repository that were brought together from different
essential to business decision-making, otherwise data sources. Business Intelligence has grown
potential business opportunities may be missed and significantly since then due to the advancement of
important lessons may not be learnt. The rapid BI tools and also the readiness of companies to
changes in business climate and conditions have adopt new strategies to stay ahead of their game.
brought Business Intelligence (BI) into the limelight Some of the technologies such as Decision Support
even for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Systems (DSS), Executive Information Systems
To bring about a competitive advantage, companies (EIS), Data Warehouse (DW), Online Analytical
have to think of new ways to improve their Processing (OLAP) and Data Mining have had a
businesses. One among the several strategies has significant impact on the increase in popularity of
been the adoption of Data Warehouse (DW) and BI.
Business Intelligence (BI). This has become an According to a survey of CIOs in 2012 (Gartner,
essential component of contemporary business 2012), BI was ranked as the top technology priority
decision support systems. However, amongst SMEs, by the companies as BI enabled them to create new
there is a general lack of technical expertise required capabilities. Howson (2008) also noted that BI
to convert data into information to facilitate an helped employees in all cadres to interact with, and
informed business decision making process. analyse, business data in order to manage and
Furthermore, the lack of understanding of the increase the efficiency of the company, to identify
benefits of BI and budget also make SMEs reluctant any new opportunities and to facilitate operation
to invest in adopting any BI solutions. reengineering. Watson and Wixom (2007) pointed
Business Intelligence in itself is not a novel out that information retrieval could be faster and
concept. This term was first put forward by Luhn cheaper by implementing BI solutions. They also
(1958). As Burstein and Holsapple (2008) recalled, mentioned that BI solutions could help organisations
this concept was reintroduced by Howard Dresner in achieve their business goals. Chugh and Grandhi

41
Raj, R., Wong, S. and Beaumont, A.
Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study.
DOI: 10.5220/0006049500410050
In Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2016) - Volume 3: KMIS, pages 41-50
ISBN: 978-989-758-203-5
Copyright c 2016 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
KMIS 2016 - 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

(2013) summarised key benefits of implementing BI to implement BI. However, there remains the need
within an enterprise, which include: to identify a suitable strategy to integrate BI
 Ability to analyse data from multiple sources components with a company’s existing systems.
and using various dimensions; Some of the major players in the BI field are
 Enabling managers to make intelligent business well-known names like Oracle, Microsoft, IBM,
decisions by identifying important patterns in SAS and SAP. Over the last few years, some smaller
the business transaction data; vendors like Qlik and Tableau are gaining
 Improved accuracy in predictions of business popularity. Amongst the major suppliers of BI
trend; solutions, Microsoft and IBM are two suppliers
 Increased operational efficiency through whose BI products cover the entire stack of BI
identifying root causes of problems. components. Suppliers like Microsoft also deliver
these BI components as a part of the Microsoft
1.1 BI Components Developer Network (MSDN) license (Microsoft,
2016c) without any extra cost.
To generate business intelligence, data from
business transactions needs to undergo an ETL 1.3 BI Usage
(Extract-Transform-Load) process which cleanses,
transforms and restructures the data into a data Existing business sectors which make use of BI to
warehouse or a data mart. Data warehouses and data make some key business decisions include: banking,
marts are essentially databases specially designed health service, IT companies, insurance companies,
for facilitating data analysis and knowledge manufacturing industry, financial services and many
discovery. The data analyses are guided by the Key more. As mentioned, the majority of large
Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the organisation organisations are already drawing benefits from
and they vary from business to business. A data using BI and BI has become one of the major
visualisation tool is used to present the results of strategies to maintain a competitive edge.
data analyses to BI users. These results may appear A survey conducted by McCabe (2012) found
in the form of standard reports based on regular that 33% of medium-size companies already used BI
queries or as on-demand reports which show solutions and a further 28% planned to use BI
information about business performance and solutions. However, amongst smaller organisations,
efficiency. Figure 1 summarises the key components only 16% were using BI solutions and 16% planned
of a BI solution. to use BI solutions. Though McCabe’s (2012)
survey showed that the adoption of BI amongst
SMEs was slow, there was an upward trend in the
awareness of the need for BI.
Studies (Horakova and Skalska, 2013) have
shown that different departments and business units
within a company use some kind of BI tools, and the
major users of BI include managers from: sales,
marketing, purchasing, accrual, finance, accounting,
Figure 1: Key Components of BI. human resource and IT. It is therefore clear to see
that BI is not just for top-level management such as
1.2 BI Vendors Managing Directors. A wide range of business
decision-making processes can also be benefited
As mentioned earlier, BI solutions comprise multiple from using BI.
technological components. In the past, each BI
component was built and delivered by specialised 1.4 BI Solutions
vendors. Selecting an appropriate combination of BI
components to meet a business’s need requires Given the cost and complexity involved in most BI
technical expertise which is often not readily solutions, a large number of SMEs simply adopt a
available in a business setting. The need to integrate BI solution which utilises spreadsheets such as MS
various BI components also pushes up the overall Excel integrated with a database (McCabe, 2012;
implementation cost of a BI solution. Nowadays, Tutunea and Rus, 2012). However, as typical
suppliers have developed BI components that could spreadsheet software does not come with a rich set
be easily integrated. This massively reduces the cost of data analysis and visualisation tools to facilitate

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 Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study

knowledge discovery, the resulting level of BI is level management in SMEs are based on the results
rudimentary. from various Information and Communications
Another contemporary BI solution comes in a Technology (ICT) tools built as a part of the
form of Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS is company’s infrastructure (Tutunea and Rus, 2012).
essentially a software application deployed in the There is a general opinion that SMEs are trailing
cloud. Rather than purchasing the software behind in adopting Business Intelligence to assist in
application from a vendor and installing it in the decision-making. There are a lot of studies and
company’s server, companies pay monthly or yearly articles describing successful adoption and
subscriptions to gain access to the application via the utilisation of BI amongst large organisations but
Internet. With SaaS, company data is typically similar successful stories amongst SMEs are
stored in the cloud and is managed by the service uncommon (Fink and Ploder, 2009).
provider (Papazoglou, 2003). One typical Irrespective of size and sector, companies
application of BI supported by SaaS is to provide appreciate the necessity for, and the benefits of, BI
intelligence on customer satisfaction in order to to assist in the business decision-making process.
bring about an improved Customer Relationship However, with the complexity involved in a typical
Management (CRM). BI as a Service could be very BI implementation process, there is a high risk for
beneficial for SMEs because they are cost effective the project to fail in SMEs. Hence, SMEs need a
and also relatively easy to implement. The major simple, flexible and efficient solution.
concern of using a cloud-based service is data
security, privacy and data ownership. 2.1 Challenges of BI Adoption in SMEs
While data ownership and privacy are not issues
for a locally-hosted BI solution, there is the need to There are various factors that affect SMEs’ planning
consider how data visualisation reports can be to adopt BI solutions:
shared with other stakeholders. BI using web  BI solutions are often expensive, for example, a
technologies, e.g. Google Chart (Google, 2016), cloud-based BI solution typically costs at least
should enable web users to maintain reports in the USD$500 per month per user.
web, distribute the reports to interested users,  While off-the-shelf BI tools are available, the
annotate the content and also generate ad-hoc reports learning curve of such tools for non-technical
from web applications dynamically. business users is often steep.
 Hosting a BI solution requires the support of a
non-trivial, and often costly, hardware
2 BI AND THE SME infrastructure.
 While there are a wide range of BI solutions
The European Commission (EC) defined a small and available, SMEs often lack in-depth
medium-size enterprise (SME) as a business which knowledge of BI to select the most appropriate
has less than 250 staff, with a turnover of no more solution for addressing the business’s needs.
than €50m and 99% of businesses in the EU fall in  Generating BI is often a non-trivial task which
this category (European Commission, 2016). With a requires good knowledge and understanding of
relatively small turnover, SMEs typically do not database modelling and data warehousing.
have additional financial and human resources to Such technical know-how is often not readily
invest in new technologies such as BI systems that available within most SMEs.
are not core to their businesses. Hence, it comes as In summary, the challenges can be narrowed
no surprise that the adoption of BI amongst SMEs down to two main factors: cost involved and lack of
has been slow. Tutunea and Rus (2012) noted that knowledge among the available resource pool to
cost-effective cloud-based solutions to BI exist and handle complicated BI tools. While these factors are
an efficient BI solution can give SMEs a competitive legitimate barriers for SMEs to adopting a BI
advantage. However, the issue of lacking expertise solution, they should not prove detrimental in
and technical know-how to select and adopt a promoting the implementation of BI solutions in
suitable BI solution still poses a challenge for most SMEs. To overcome the budget issue, there is a need
SMEs. to identify low cost BI solutions. For example, a
For SMEs, the term Business Intelligence is standard BI solution is shipped as part of
often misperceived as a technology that is applicable Microsoft’s flagship product. Companies owning an
to large organisations only. This misconception MSDN licence can have access to Microsoft’s
about BI means that most decisions made by the top

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KMIS 2016 - 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

standard BI solution at no extra cost. However, AGGORA Group wanted to improve their ability
many SMEs may not even be aware of such an to manage, analyse and utilise data. They also
opportunity nor have the expertise required to start wanted to have a data management system that is
utilising it. flexible and can adapt to future changes so that they
can manage their business effectively and
2.2 Benefits of Adopting BI in SMEs efficiently. Though the existing IT team had
capabilities to generate reports for the management
According to a research by Scholz et al. (2010), team to analyse, the report generation was a
there are lots of benefits SMEs could realise by laborious and inflexible task and it slowed down the
using BI tools. Some of the most important benefits processing of company’s core IT system because the
identified in the research include: database was not designed to facilitate report
 Improvements in Data Support through generation. Furthermore, as the company has been in
providing easy access to data. Improved data business for over ten years, there were also some
validation and cleansing process also leads to legacy IT issues that affected the efficiency of report
reports generated using high-quality data. generation. The leadership team has therefore
 Improvements in Decision Support through decided to implement a BI solution to support their
providing rich visuals to support an accelerated expansion plans for the next decade. However, the
decision-making process. In addition, BI tools key challenge for implementing a BI solution for
could help identify risks and rectify them in a AGGORA Group was that they did not possess
timely manner. sufficient expertise in BI technologies. BI
 Cost and Time Saving can be achieved by technologies such as data warehousing need
various BI tools such as dashboards and advanced knowledge in database design and it is a
scorecards because the retrieval of the data will demanding task. Furthermore, the IT staff within the
be faster and it is easier to interpret the visual company were already tied up to the day-to-day
output of business data analysis. support and enhancement of the existing IT
The cost involved could be subsidised by infrastructure. Hence, retraining existing staff was
utilising technologies that are already part of the not a possible option.
existing company infrastructure. For example, if a The company secured funding from the UK
company adopts the Microsoft suite of business government through the Knowledge Transfer
products, no extra cost is required for purchasing Partnerships (KTP) scheme (InnovateUK, 2016) to
standard BI components. Furthermore, the cost for investigate possible solutions for their business
purchasing data visualisation tools can be reduced challenges. This enables an IT graduate to be
when lightweight web technologies are used to employed and work on implementing a BI solution
present the business intelligence. This, not only with guidance from a UK university. The IT
minimises the overall cost, it also removes the need graduate is employed by the university, but is based
for extensive training. in the company and hence able to interact with the
company employees daily. This enables all project
stakeholders to be involved in the project
development, with all views and concerns
3 BI IMPLEMENTATION IN AN considered and addressed, from the beginning of the
SME project. This helped to ensure a smooth roll out of
the BI solution.
3.1 About the Company
3.2 Project Objectives
The current Business Intelligence project is carried
out for a UK based company known as AGGORA The main source of the company’s business data is
Group which is specialised in catering equipment generated by an in-house software developed for
solutions (AGGORA Group, 2016). Their core managing field services. This BI project focuses on:
business is in sales and service of catering  Analysing Client KPIs: Since the major
equipment and they perform asset management for business of the company is servicing catering
their clients who range from major corporates to equipment, it is important to understand
small businesses. The company has approximately whether the Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
150 staff. The company turnover is approximately are met, whether the customers are satisfied,
£25m a year. etc.

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 Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study

 Analysing Engineers’ Performance and planning phase. In this phase, the management team
Productivity: The company employs over 80 that would be consuming the intelligence articulate
field service engineers. To better manage the their requirements and establish the KPIs required to
engineers’ time and the quality of their work, be measured. This forms the foundation for the
the company would like to measure and subsequent phases.
analyse the performance and the productivity Based on the objectives stated in Section 3.2,
of the engineers. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and SQL
 Analysing the Financial Figures: As the Server Data Tools (SSDT) were used for developing
growth rate of the company increases, the required BI solution. In addition, the end user
analysing the costs and sales figures will visualisation is achieved using Microsoft Power BI
enable the users to establish the economic state to generate self-servicing reports while the SQL
of play of the company. Server Reporting Services (SSRS) was used to
 Asset Management: The company holds large generate standard reports.
volumes of historical information about the This decision was based on the existing IT
clients’ equipment such as service history and infrastructure available in the company. Since the
overall spend. The ability to utilise this company already uses Microsoft SQL Server 2012
information will enhance the service provided as its backend database, the Microsoft BI suite was a
to the clients. convenient option to implement this BI project.
In terms of maintainability and sustainability, as Microsoft SQL Server 2012 has a database system
this is a KTP project and each KTP project is and other components needed for BI
required to include a detailed plan for embedding implementation.
new skills and knowledge into the company. Our SQL Server 2012 (Microsoft, 2016b) includes
project plan therefore has included provision for five core server components providing services
knowledge transfer and embedding through ranging from data storage, management and security
workshops and training. to specialist tools for data analysis, e.g. OLAP, and
data mining. Apart from the Analysis Service, we
3.3 Implementation Methodology have used the other four core components in this
iteration.
There are different approaches for implementing a
BI solution. This could vary significantly based on 3.3.2 Data Collection
the size and the IT budget of the company, as well as
the company’s knowledge in the BI field. For Once the requirements are gathered and objectives
are set, we then source the data and transform it into
example, larger organisations with ample budget
may purchase one of the several BI solutions a form that will provide the required intelligence to
available from a leading vendor. Such a BI solution the users. It is important to identify the data
available in the source that can meet the project
may include staff training and supports. Such an
organisation can also afford to employ a dedicated objectives.
team to implement and support the system. As mentioned earlier, the source business data is
generated by an in-house field service management
However, SMEs are unlikely to be able to afford a
high profile BI system bundle and the capabilities of system, the data is stored in the form of a relational
such solutions are likely to exceed the needs of an database using the SQL server. The database stores
information such as equipment management, cost
average SME.
We have adopted an iterative, five-stage and sales and engineers’ timesheet information.
implementation process as advocated by McGonagle Based on the project objectives, it was decided
that the data from the source would be transformed
(2007):
and stored into a data warehouse. One of the most
 Planning commonly used technique for designing a data
 Data Collection warehouse is dimensional modelling (Kimball and
 Data Analysis Ross, 2013). The main reasons for its popularity are
 Data Distribution that it results in a database schema which supports
 Feedback fast query performance and allows presentation of
data in a user consumable format.
3.3.1 Planning
Though the dimensional model holds the same
Our BI implementation project starts with the data as the source database, the dimensional model

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KMIS 2016 - 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

deals with un-normalised tables for extracting  A Copy Column function which adds new
summarised and aggregated data. The main building columns, which are the copies of columns from
blocks of building a dimensional model are: facts input data set.
and dimensions. We have followed Kimball’s four  A Data Conversion function which enables
steps to dimensional modelling (Kimball and Ross, changing the data type of a column during the
2013): transformation.
1. Select the business process.  A Derived Column function which creates new
2. Declare the grain. columns derived from the values in the input
3. Identify the dimensions. columns.
4. Identify the facts. Power BI (Microsoft, 2015) provides business
As per Kimball, a data warehouse could be users with useful data analysis and rich visualisation
designed based on the two kinds of schemata: to facilitate informed decision-making. The desktop
 Star Schema usually consists of fact tables version of Power BI provides the ability to create
linked to dimension tables using powerful data connection, models and reports for
primary/foreign key relationships. data analysis. In this project, we have used Power BI
 Snowflake Schema consists of hierarchical desktop version to connect to the data warehouse.
relationships in a dimension table, with Once we have connected to the data source, we can
normalised, low-cardinality attributes adjust the data to meet our needs. We did some
appearing as secondary tables connected to the transformations using query editor in Power BI such
base dimension table by an attribute key. as renaming column headers and changing the text
to numbers. It is important to note that, the original
For the purpose of this project, we have opted for
data source is not affected; only this particular view
a hybrid approach which is a combination of both
of the data is modified. We have also created new
star and snowflake schema. As we have used an
measures using Data Analysis Expression (DAX)
iterative approach to build the data warehouse, some
queries (Microsoft, 2016a) to provide aggregated
of the iterations utilised a star schema and others
data.
followed the snowflake schema. In order to maintain
the data consistency among the shared dimensions, 3.3.4 Data Dissemination
we have used the hybrid approach. The trade-off for
utilising a hybrid approach is that the performance The output of the data analysis process is presented
of the resulting data warehousing is slightly lower. as business intelligence to the end users. We utilised
However, due to the nature of our data, the slight the cloud-based version of Power BI to disseminate
degradation in performance was not noticeable by the results of data analysis to company managers.
end users. Users can quickly generate and deploy reports and
dashboards and share them with other users.
3.3.3 Data Analysis
Once the data warehouse is designed, it is populated
with data from the live transaction database. This is
known as an ETL (Extract-Transform-Load)
process. Our ETL process uses Microsoft SQL
Server Data Tools (SSDT) which provides a
graphical interface that eases the design and
implementation of data transformation and
integration steps. As discussed earlier, our source
data is from a single source, the ETL process
involves mapping the data from the live transaction
database to the data warehouse. The transformations
performed in our ETL process include (Lacko, Figure 2: Sample reports created in Power BI.
2009):
 An Aggregate function which applies Any Excel user who is familiar with using pivot
aggregation (minimum, maximum, average, tables and charts could be potential users of Power
sum, etc.) on the incoming set of data. BI because the learning curve is not steep. With
 A Conditional Split function which divides the some basic training, we found that the end users
set of data into more subsets. were generally able to generate required business

46
 Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study

intelligence using Power BI without much technical information available. As a result, the management
assistance. Our Power BI users can edit their own is able to make more informed business decisions as
reports, but they cannot edit the underlying data. they have a clearer picture of the state of the
This helps ensure data integrity. business.
We have chosen Power BI over the other self- We have also carried out tangible benefit
service BI options available in the market mainly analysis of implementing a BI solution in the
because Power BI is fairly easy to use even for non company. This analysis revealed that there were
IT experts and it has the ability to integrate with clear tangible benefits within six months of
Office 365 (Microsoft, 2016d). Figure 2 shows some implementing the first iteration of the BI solution.
of our sample reports and dashboards created using The self-servicing reporting solution using Power BI
Power BI. To ensure confidentiality, the clients’ has enabled top and middle level management to
name have been removed in the sample reports. explore the business data and create their own on-
Apart from Power BI, Microsoft SQL Server demand BI reports without reliance on the IT
Reporting Services (SSRS) was used to create department. This has led to a significant amount of
standard reports that could be delivered to relevant time saving in the IT department as there is no
users on a regular basis. SSRS is a server based longer the need for them to produce reports using
report generating software that comes as part of the queries and pivot tables in an ad hoc manner. This
Microsoft SQL Server suite. The SSRS provides a has also opened up more opportunities for the IT
unique user interface based on Visual Studio that department to widen the scope of information
enables developers to connect to the relevant data available. The use of a specialised data warehouse
(Microsoft, 2016e). has also reduced the processing load of the live
In this project, we used SSRS to create some database, making the core business system more
standard KPI reports such as Engineer Performance efficient, reliable and effective.
and Productivity. These reports are embedded into The following table lists some of the key benefits
an email which is sent to the respective managers for identified so far:
their analysis.
Table 1: Tangible Benefits.
3.3.5 Feedbacks
Tangible Benefits Value Projected
At the end of each implementation iteration, Achieved Value within
feedback is collected from the end users. This within 6 12 months (£)
feedback is used to inform the next iteration of months (£)
implementation. Cost saving resulted from £4,202 £8,404
In this project, the feedback we obtained is from the introduction of Power
BI for self-service
a steering group consisting of managers from
reporting
various levels in the company who are also users of
our BI solution. Our steering group members include Increased efficiency, £18,060 £43,000
productivity and revenue
commercial and technical directors as well as
through new reports
business operation managers. The steering group generated using data
verifies the quality of the data and the accuracy of warehouse and Power BI
the intelligence provided and also provides feedback
Time saving achieved for £7,000 £14,000
on how the solution can be improved in the future. IT team by using data
warehouse for generating
report
4 BENEFITS Total: £29,262 £65,404

Our experience shows that adopting BI has been

beneficial to the company. The key beneficiaries so 5 DISCUSSION
far have been the top and middle level management
as well as the IT department. Since the introduction In this section, we will summarise our experiences in
of the BI solution, the management gained the implementing the first iteration of a BI solution
freedom to explore business information without within a UK SME. As a first remark, it is important
requiring IT support and the IT team has been freed to understand that implementing a BI solution is an
up to improve the quality and the granularity of iterative process and it is not trivial. Thorough

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KMIS 2016 - 8th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing

understanding of the existing systems is required. transformation and cleansing steps in the ETL
The objectives and KPIs of the business should be process.
well-defined before any implementation commen-  To facilitate efficient data retrieval and
ces. In addition, this requires technical knowledge of analysis, data warehouses cannot be created by
BI concepts such as data warehousing, the ETL simply joining tables from the live transaction
process and available data visualisation tools. database. It should be properly designed by
In terms of implementation strategy, we have following guidelines on dimensional
chosen to deliver BI in a top-down manner, with the modelling.
first set of BI solutions rolled out to top-level  The Microsoft suite of BI tools could be a
managers. This allowed top-level management to perfect candidate for SMEs wanting to
better understand the benefits of BI, and hence be implement BI solutions, especially when they
more supportive of a wider exploitation of BI within are already using other Microsoft business
the company. products.
To keep the costs down and to make the solution  While technical barriers do exist, there are
more accessible to a wide range of end users, we government schemes, in the case of UK and
have deliberately used only a limited set of BI tools. Europe, available to help SMEs to overcome
Based on our experience, the Microsoft suite of BI such barriers through funding, recruitment and
tools can be used to support all aspects of business knowledge transfer.
intelligence required in this project. Microsoft also
provides tools for more advanced business data
analysis such as creating data cubes and mining data 6 CONCLUSION
for prediction analysis.
It is vital for an IT solution to be user-friendly so
BI tools provide analytic data and key performance
that there will be more buy-in from end users. The
information which enables organisations of all sizes
SSRS tools used to generate standard reports require to be managed efficiently. The usage of BI tools in
some technical skills to work efficiently with it. On
SMEs was generally lower than that in large
the other hand, Power BI supports an intuitive organisations. Studies show that SMEs appreciate
process for creating on-demand reports and it the importance of streamlining their information
provides rich data visualisations. Most Excel users
resource to help them make important business
will be able to work efficiently with Power BI decisions. They are also aware of the availability of
without much training. Furthermore, there are many BI tools in the market. However, the technical
several tutorials available for demonstrating how to
expertise required to select the right combination of
use Microsoft BI tools. tools is not readily available in many SMEs.
Finally, our experience shows that: Furthermore, the general lack of sufficient IT budget
 BI solutions empower SMEs to understand prevents SMEs from investing time and money in
their current performance and evaluate it adopting BI solutions.
against the company’s KPIs. In light of a BI implementation project, we have
 While many SMEs understand the benefits of described how an SME can reap the benefits of BI
implementing BI solutions, they are often put using the Microsoft BI suite: Microsoft SQL Server
off by the seemingly complex and expensive for data modelling and Power BI for data analysis
implementation process. Our experience shows and visualisation. Based on our experience, we have
that affordable and relatively simple BI also made a recommendation of how SMEs may
solutions exist and they can easily fit in SMEs’ approach implementing a BI solution, highlighting
existing IT solutions. the need for good understanding of the existing data
 As BI solutions become more readily available, source, cleansing and transforming the data, creating
SMEs should possess better understand of their a data warehouse based on Kimball’s approach for
existing IT infrastructure before making any storing the transformed data and presenting the data
new investments. to the end users using various visualisation tools. A
 Implementing a BI solution involves various possible limitation of our work is that it is based on a
phases. A good understanding of these phases company which has already adopted a Microsoft-
is needed to bring about success. based IT infrastructure and has accumulated a
 In order to generate more accurate business significant amount of business transaction data. We
intelligence, it is important to have high-quality recognise that if our approach were to be applied in
data. This can be achieved using various a company with a different IT infrastructure, the

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 Business Intelligence Solution for an SME: A Case Study

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