Stay informed - the business intelligence opportunity

While the recession is proving tough for most businesses, resellers focused on the information space are witnessing a strong surge in demand.Mark Register, IBM Vice President for Information in Demand, Asia Pacific, believes companies operating in the information space are seeing “fairly significant” numbers of customers wanting to understand how they can better leverage the value of information in their business.“It’s an interesting period with this global financial crisis,” he says, “because what it has done is it’s actually shown to the C-level [management] within a business just how vital information is to their success.”Register says better methods of collating and presenting information will provide a business, regardless of its size, with a competitive advantage in the marketplace it’s operating in.It is not only a competitive advantage from a sales perspective, but from a cost management perspective, because information can provide a business with a means to analyse its workforce – to understand where added focus is required, and where it needs to reduce focus.“The whole economic environment, for our business, has actually been pretty strong,” he says. “So systems integrators that haven’t traditionally been thinking about helping customers unlock the business value of information are now really focused on this area.”These solutions are not limited to big organisations, with information solutions suitable for all businesses, from large to small.And Register believes this practice is part of the future and a real opportunity for resellers and systems integrators. “Companies are starting to look at how they can analyse both the structured and unstructured information in their business to either improve sales or reduce costs or drive value,” he says. “Everyone should be jumping on this bandwagon, if they’re not already.”