Business Intelligence Schemes within SMEs Functioning Processes

Business intelligence systems are conceived in order to design and develop sophisticated logical-mathematical paths, prevailingly software-based, able to support the management in strategic and operating applications of decision-making. At first glance, the use of such solutions seems an exclusive prerogative, where such a sensibility would exist, of large enterprises, more oriented to bear huge business investments: anyway, a deeper and more conscious analysis, about business intelligence schemes, allows to highlight that fundaments of such systems are prevailingly the business functioning formalized procedures, embedded, thanks to progressively comprehensive algorithm representations, within sophisticated software applications. In truth, nowadays the evolution of information and communication technology allows even to a ‘common’ business user the availability and manoeuvrability of undoubtedly advanced software solutions, up to very little time ago even qualified to be in the vanguard. Only for example, we may consider that the generation of an OLAP (on-line analytical processing) cube, one of the most widespread business intelligence tools, can be obtained even by using only a spreadsheet, working as a client on a DBMS (data-base management system), i.e. by using usual office automation software environments. Thus, the business intelligence fundamental feature doesn’t rely exclusively on the use of ‘heavy’ software solutions (we may think of data warehouse. Data mart, data mining and so on), but rather on the processing of formalized paths (for an efficient business functioning representation), designed and developed in order to be sculptured and embedded within descriptive and predictive algorithms, first on a logical-mathematical level and then on a software one. Since the widespread availability of adequate software solutions (even of individual productivity), it seems evident that business intelligence systems would represent a really interesting and concretely ‘implementable’ opportunity also for SMEs.