How can small and medium- sized companies benefit from the use of business technology software?
The purpose for the majority of the small and medium-sized companies is to improve their sales or growth. Nowadays, the online sales and the electronic data analysis represent a crucial phase to achieve this. Since a considerable number of years now, the use of software in the decision making by the large companies has been a regular practice. The competition this business faces is fearful, and the decisions are in some cases critical. On the other hand this scenario does not always apply for the small and medium ones. There are three main reasons for this.
First, their sales are not as considerable as they can be for the large business. This means they do not confront the same decision-making pressure as the large ones do. Furthermore the potential negative consequences from bad decisions do not impact as hard as it does in large business.
Second, the characteristics inherent to this type of business such as the attraction of customers according the location and design of the facility, or the extensive display of goods to facilitate the selection of them (1) generates often a switch of consumers. Ergo, purchases from another business due to attractive circumstances, for instance provisional especial price in a product or service are common situation. As a result the potential “single-time custo{NOTE:no se si es correcto poner esto entre comillas}mers” can provoke a significant variability of consumers.
Third, the early development of the company itself can be a family whom traditions and habits can influence the decisions. In this instance the hierarchical position plays a central roll in the decision making process. In several occasions this decisions are made experience-based and what is more risky, ignoring the market trends. Moreover in other cases, there is not a specific department or person in charge of neither the decisions nor the direction the company must go.
The loose of one client, although is not the ideal scenario, cannot compromise most of the profits in the company. Nevertheless this altogether can produce a company with a limited customer portfolio despite the large variability of them.
The implementation of new technologies allows companies to significantly increase their ability to achieve favorable positions in both domestic and international markets. However these tools must not represent an excessive expense. Especially in developing countries such as Mexico, the deficiencies of governmental programs to support these businesses, and the capital are limited. Hence this obliges the companies to pursuit low cost tools in order to manage their requirements. In contrast the continuous use of technologies to enhance productivity by the large companies or franchises, has putted progressively pressure in this challenging situation.
“Business intelligence (BI) is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw data.” (Şerbănescu 2011). In addition “the technologies for this support depend on a complex and powerful entity known as warehouse data”. (Stefan 2009) The purpose in this systems type was determined by “the requests of dynamic multidimensional systems able to support the intelligence decisional processes and having predictable abilities.” (Stefan 2009)
There are four core issues in the companies in order to make decisions, data mining, referred to sifting through very large amounts of data for useful information (2) analytical processing, querying and reporting.
To accomplish the activities aforementioned companies must be able to manage data warehouse. Stefan (2009) states that this data aims to support management decision making for business performance. Additionally to data-based decisions there are different options in the market for the small and medium business. And they are ranging from consulting services, sales strategy imitation from other businesses to specific software. However the consulting services present two main disadvantages.
The first one is the price, these services often are expensive and the small companies cannot always have enough money to pay it. Second, using this type of advisory generates certain grade of dependency to it and the company never gets to control and store the information in the warehouse. This represents a crucial phase due to the data warehouse “contains historical and current data with potential interest for managers inside the organization’. (Stefan 2009)
Consequently the option for this business in general can be the usage of software. Nevertheless, there are important issues before the implementation of this technology. Primarily the specificity of the company’s needs, in other words the business objectives. Secondly the trends in the market they are forming part of. This is most of the times the largest challenge for this business due to the economic or human resource limitation.
However this can be compensated when the software offers good features in example alerts capable to create indicators and delivers. Considering the lack of one manager in this business multiple organization options are required. Also integration with other common tools such as Microsoft excels or any other software to manage information is necessary. For the purpose of exemplification the Qlikview software was chosen for two reasons.
First its interface makes it extremely intuitive and easy-to-learn for any user. Second the usage is conditioned to the possibility of being installed not only in a laptop or personal computer. Qlikview is also available for other gadgets that permit the easy and dynamic performance of it. Furthermore the software allows several people work on a single project at the same time permitting flexibility in the use of the information.
These characteristics are adequate in developing countries in Latin America, in particular in the Mexican market. According to the national Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico, there are approximately 4 million 15,000 business units of which 99.8% are small-medium sized that generate 52% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 72% of employment in the country. (3)
Due to this distribution of the market it can be said that in Mexico exist an important proximity between the producers and the suppliers. Under this circumstance the Qlikview software presents the capability to consolidate the data coming from various sources. In this way the rapid an efficient adaptability of the potential changes of the market is guaranteed. Also the software possesses associative logic in other words same names are joined automatically but the designer has the liberty to remove or edit those joins.

Furthermore there has been an increase of internet users from 2008 with a 23.6% to 33.8% in 2010 and the amount continues increasing every year. However in the same period of time there has been only an increase of 5% of the users that made a transaction through the internet (3). There are three reasons that explain this.
First the uncertainty this type of situations produces among the population regarding submitting bank information online. Second the lack of reliable platforms to purchase products safely delivered. Third the inefficacy of the government to produce controls or law to penalize scams or robs. In order to obtain benefits out the software demographical analysis is the main issue. Using information concerning clients and sales data, price sensibility, preferences regarding the products represent in most cases the fundamental topic.
Finally as stated at the beginning, profitability is the main objective for the companies. The financial analysis plays a fundamental role in the activity progress. The analyses on departments, products, and locations, are possible with the Qlikview. The system not only permits to generate a report, but also to store historical information in order to evaluate and compare different periods of time. This is remarkably important for the small and medium sized companies due to the evaluation on specific products. Furthermore it is possible to determine the trend on the market based on these findings.
The permanent development of business technology can find a niche in the small medium business. Basically the amount of information they need to store and analyze is no case comparable with large ones. Nevertheless the complexities these programs are created with are suitable only for the large companies in the first place.

Conclusions
Nowadays one of the crucial phases in every single company is the decision process. To do so companies must consider the challenges of the globalized world. The small medium companies present specific characteristics that create a suitable environment to use new technologies. This must be evaluated according to the needs, objectives, and the financial resources. This scenario is especially present in developing countries, particularly in Latin America.
Small and medium sizes business must develop strategies to keep up with the continuous evolution of the market for low prices. However the business intelligence software does not necessity be deployed unfounded. The company must have, so to say numbers to find. In other words they need to make decisions based in data that position the company in a more competitive place in the market.
The advantages the software such as Qlikview offer are in direct contact with the companies requirements. It is easy and practical to use, the information can be shared and rapidly adaptable. In addition the current data not only support the current decisions. It also functions as a backup for further pronouncements.
The Mexican business market is a suitable example to demonstrate small and medium -sized companies whom interaction is narrowly. Due to this the characteristics this market has showed in the past years proves the availability for the use of BI such as Qlikview. Furthermore the national statistics demonstrate the arousal of the population towards technological progress. This represents a large niche for new technologies implementation. Although there are several changes that need to be completed first such as more support from the government toward this industry. The potential in the this country and its industry for the use and benefit of business technology software in undeniable.