While the most prominent tools used by SMBs are those that support basic ad hoc queries, there is evidence that current small business users are investigating more advanced analytics options.

Business Intelligence by itself has provided enough business insights, however, SMBs are now looking for extracting business perspectives to drive superior decisions and ultimately achieve superior results. Business Intelligence (BI) is fast becoming an integral technology investment for SMBs directly contributing to its revenue growth and reducing operating costs by enabling informed decision making. Spreadsheet-based BI usage is changing rapidly as tools and platforms have matured and become more widely available through Cloud-based services. As a result, enterprise-grade ETL, analytics, reporting, collaboration, dashboards and other functionalities are now within affordable reach of SMBs. At the same time sophisticated SMBs are using Big Data to extract business perspectives to drive superior decisions and ultimately achieve superior results as mobility, social media, and other transactional services have increased the number avenues for connections with their customers. In addition to understanding customers, SMBs are also considering analytics as an important initiative to help them improve operational efficiencies. There are many different tactical objectives for deploying big data projects but the top among them are sentiment monitoring, generating new revenue streams & improving predictive analytics.