Datawatch is expanding its business intelligence software into the midmarket, with a focus on helping SMBs cut costs by improving data access and analysis efficiency with Web-based services.Datawatch, an enterprise information management company, announced Nov. 20 its
fourth-quarter and fiscal 2008 earnings and signaled a commitment to expanding
its technology offerings to small and midsize businesses. Despite a dip in
quarterly and fiscal year earnings, CEO Ken
Bero said expansion into the SMB market offers the company new opportunities.
In August, Datawatch announced the release of Monarch BI Server, a Web-based business
intelligence solution built specifically to address the unique needs of SMBs.
The SMBs marketplace is a high priority for us, said Bero. We are extending
into this marketplace because of the economic conditions affecting small
businesses. Bero said Datawatch plans to double the sales resources that are
focused on the SMB market.
The Monarch BI Server was designed specifically to strike a balance between
increasing operating efficiency and reducing the total cost of ownership to
SMBs, Bero said. Monarch BI Server gives SMBs the benefits of BI without the
significant time and resources required for traditional BI deployments, he
said. When you take a look at the SMBs, they generally dont have big IT
shops. These BI products need to be easy to install and easy to use, and thats
the criteria we built the product around.
Datawatch Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer John Kitchen said
although marketing the product will pose a challenge, Datawatch is
well-positioned to reach midmarket customers.
We sell to larger enterprise customers and the desktop, and I think, quite
frankly, we felt we had the capability to reach the SMB market, he said. It
just so happens that we came out with a product that has a really low
administrative cost and allows [SMBs] to move forward with their business at a
reasonable cost.
Kitchen said that for many midmarket businesses, maximizing the value of client
information is crucial to day-to-day business efficiency. This is all
information that already exists, but by being able to leverage that information
and analyze that info without having to write custom reports, you can work
smarter and make a heck of an ROI on it, he said.
Click here for three key principles to help maximize your
business intelligence investment.
Andy Abbott, assistant controller for Russell Sigler, an Arizona-based
wholesale distributor of Carrier air conditioners, said he is looking forward
to Datawatchs Web-based version of Monarch. One of the first ways we used
Monarch was to take information from inventory and accounts receivable and
streamline the process, he said. We used to put that info into an Excel
spreadsheet daily, and it took 45 minutes a day and was error-prone. After
Monarch, it would read the report files, extract the info we needed and export
in to Excel, and that took about 45 seconds.
By implementing the BI Server, Abbot said the company can make the same kind of
analyzed information available to the sales force.
What that will do is provide not just the information, but the analysis of
the sales to the sales force, so that they have a better handle on their
customers and their own numbers. That will be done without their having to
learn more about spreadsheets and data analysis, he said. Wherever there is
data, we have found a benefit by using this technology.