The Business Intelligence Blog

The Small Business Intelligence Summit (SBIS) will kick off the first of a nationwide series of events in Dallas, Texas on Thursday, May 14, with intensive sessions to help small businesses succeed in the current challenging economy. The events will allow existing and developing companies to connect and collaborate on solutions that support their business in today’s environment and well into the future.

The events will feature expert speakers, including sessions with:

– Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalition and co-
author of numerous articles, including “Unleashing the Hidden Productivity
of Your Small Business. Unified Communications: A Key Component of Your
Telework Program”
– Bob Burg, corporate speaker and author of “Endless Referrals: Network
Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales”
– Christopher Justice, CEO of Sparksight, a small business-marketing
agency
– Small and Mid-size Business experts from Avaya, a global leader in
communications technology.

From the Press Release. More from the official site – SBIS09.

The “Microsoft SMB Insight Report” reflects the insight of Small Business Specialists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Brazil. The following are some of Microsoft’s key findings on the technologies most likely to drive growth and profitability for SMBs in 2009:

— Fifty percent of the surveyed Small Business Specialists identified virtualization or IT consolidation through a small or midsize server as the technology most likely to reduce operating costs.
— The Small Business Specialists expect a 20 percentage point increase this year in the number of SMBs that use software as a service.
— More than 50 percent of the Small Business Specialists considered customer relationship management (CRM: 34.05, 0, 0%), virtualization or IT consolidation through a small or midsize server as the best investment for maximizing business growth in a down economy.
— Nearly 40 percent expect an increased interest in business intelligence and identified it as a critical tool for helping improve a customer’s experience and increase loyalty.
— More than half of the surveyed Small Business Specialists anticipate an increase in the number of SMB remote workers, and nearly 60 percent expect that the shift to more remote workers also will lead to bigger roles and more responsibilities for those individuals working remotely.

The key here is the increased interest in business intelligence which I think makes total sense given the state of business. From the PRNewswire[Fox]