Guest Blog: Hosted Business Intelligence – Get in the Game

Stu Silberman, head of Marketing and Sales for Dataspace, discusses the benefits of hosting for business intelligence applications.

Ready for two of my favorite business mantras?

1.   “Don’t buy anything you can lease.  Don’t lease anything you can borrow.  Don’t borrow anything you can liberate…”

These words from a business school professor many years ago are timeless – cash is valuable so why tie it up unnecessarily?

2.   “Never up, never in.”  This one is from my Dad, who taught me on a golf course when I was a teenager the concept of calculated risk.

The meaning is that when putting long you often have to choose between hitting too hard or too soft.  Hit too hard because at least you’ve got a chance the ball will go in.  (More)

If you’ve been thinking about deploying a new technology, such as business intelligence that provides:

• executive scorecards to replace gut-feel with fact-based decisions and get everyone using the same data
• reporting that provides the information your organization needs to operate more efficiently
• predictive analytics so that you can anticipate market trends rather than react to them

but are hesitant to tie up cash in operating infrastructure, software licenses and maintenance fees, you’ll hit too short and keep using spreadsheets.  You’ll never sink your putt that way.

Another option: use a managed, hosted business intelligence service.  One of our pre-built business intelligence packages on a server from a provider such as Online Tech offers these advantages:

• quickly deploy a technology you’ve been hearing about, but think is only for organizations larger than yours
• eliminate large up-front investments and long-term commitments
• prove it in your business and then expand without losing a dime of sunk cost
• leave your IT staff (mostly) alone so they can focus on mission-critical business applications
• address your challenges with a ready-to-use, pre-packaged offering (we have them for finance, legal and health care applications, with more under development) or view our industry expertise for descriptions of custom work we have successfully completed for a variety of clients
• be recognized for having the foresight to take a low-risk gamble with a potentially transformational result

Don’t shy away from the promise of a new technology such as business intelligence – use the concept of mantra 1 to put it to use in a way that preserves your working capital.  Use a hosted offering to dip your toe in the water.

Dataspace has chosen Online Tech as their partner for their hosted business intelligence offerings.  Contact Stu to discuss how this partnership can benefit your organization.

Stu Silberman, Head of Marketing and Sales, Dataspace

Stu leads all marketing and sales efforts for Dataspace, an Ann Arbor-based Business Intelligence firm that replaces gut-feel guesses with fact-based decision-making to help clients of all sizes identify trends, react earlier, and yes, even predict the future.

Before joining Dataspace Stu launched new technologies at PaineWebber (now UBS), and held several leadership positions at Ford Motor Company in marketing, finance and IT, including a stint in Japan where he deployed the company’s current voice of the customer process.

Stu has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Lehigh University, an M.B.A. in Marketing from Wharton, and is PMP® certified.

For more information on business intelligence, email Stu