Abstract
The aim of this study was to identify key success factor for SME customers of cloud based Business Intelligence products. A deep interview was made with four producers and a questionnaire was carried out among 36 SMEs. The findings suggest that the most important CSFs were the level of software functionalities, the ubiquitous access to data, responsive answers to customer support requests, handling large amounts of data and implementation cost. Each of these factors addresses a specific area that customers pay close attention to during the adoption process of a cloud BI solution. Offering ubiquitous access to date and respsonsive answers to customer requests are particularly emphasized for SMEs. We also found that industry tailored software is preferred, monthly or quarterly billings, and contact by email or phone for service. The paper shows recommendations, implications of research and suggests further research on the topic.
Highlights
The amount of data available for analyses is growing considerably and IBM estimates 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last three years (IBM research, 2011; Negash, 2004)
In order to offer the customers real ubiquitous access to data, we suggest cloud Business Intelligence (BI) vendors to focus on two aspects: web browsers and multiple devices integration
If we look at the other key adoption factor belonging to the category “Support”, it scored slightly above average and strengthened the importance of providing a good customers service in the decision process of choosing a cloud BI software
Summary
The amount of data available for analyses is growing considerably and IBM estimates 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last three years (IBM research, 2011; Negash, 2004). In the last thirty years, storage space has been increasing dramatically whereas its cost has followed the opposite trend (Storage Trend study). The discipline that specializes in turning data into useful information is sometimes called Business Intelligence (BI). Why it is important for the bottom line of a company to have better information, is a crucial question and has been addressed by Nyblom et al (2012) and Watson and Wixom (2007)
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