The speed of business and the ever-increasing flow of data from disparate sources has made cloud computing the go-to model for storing and accessing data across the business. As this data consistently rolls in, companies need a fast and easily deployed solution for analyzing the data. No longer can organizations wait for months before a new BI system is deployed, or wait days or weeks to access and integrate new Big Data sets into their systems. With multiple users across different departments accessing the data, they need to effectively “flip a switch” and be able to analyze data to gain new business insights. With more organizations using a private or public cloud to store critical information, an easy-to-use cloud-based business intelligence platform gives organizations the agility and use-based pricing structure to do just that.
Some companies, such as web-based ticketing service provider eTix, based a complete overhaul of their business around cloud computing. The company, which manages an international ticket transaction service, had a complete backlog of valuable transactional data stretching back 13 years. Their current system prevented this critical data from being used effectively to make key business decisions, and sat stagnant in an Oracle datacenter. By transitioning their data to the cloud using Amazon Redshift, and applying a business intelligence layer on top of it, eTix was able to immediately access their data and make business decisions at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
Another company, Sage Human Capital, recently used cloud computing to develop a revolutionary recruiting model that was faster, more effective, and more cost efficient than other recruiting firms. Despite these advances in efficiency, eager clients and staff still clamored for more visibility into the process, looking for any data points that could set a candidate apart from another. To accomplish this, Sage employed a cloud-based business intelligence solution that was able to track and easily communicate candidate search progress, number of candidates at each stage, timing of critical activities, and recruiter productivity. Armed with this data, Sage was able to customize dashboards for each client, providing a fully transparent view of the search process and progress, all on an hourly pricing model starting at less than $1.00 per hour.
As businesses increasingly rely on their various sources of data, both inside and outside the cloud, to identify new sources of revenue or additional ways to improve the business, a powerful business intelligence solution is vital to understanding the impact of this data. When combining this platform with cloud computing, organizations are now able to glean immediate insights from their valuable data, at a cost of only pennies per hour.
