February 2017,
SMEs are often told that insights from big data analytics will offer them a competitive advantage. Research published at the end of last year by Warwick Analytics, on behalf of the Alan Turing Institute found that tools such as ERP, BI and CRM are helping businesses such as manufacturers “identify hidden information which can be used by organisations to provide valuable insights.”
However, for many new adopter SMEs – particularly SMEs – there is a worrying lack of knowledge about how this works in practice, and many companies cannot move past the ‘buzzword.’ Half of respondents to the same survey stated they didn’t clearly understand the difference between business intelligence, big data analytics, and predictive analytics.