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Business AnAlytics RetuRns $13.01 foR eveRy DollAR spent, up fRom $10.66 thRee yeARs Ago, nucleus ReseARch finDs Return on Investment for analytics and business intelligence solutions is increas- ing and currently delivering on average $13.01 for every dollar spent, according to a new analysis by Nucleus Research. The study analyzes the actual costs and benefits of Nucleus published case stud- ies on individual companies' analytics deployments. The past three years have shown a con- certed effort by vendors to deliver higher ROI for customers through increased development in the areas of cloud de- ployment, collaboration, security and mobility. Nucleus findings indicate orga- nizations are indeed continuing to make investments in analytics, particularly to meet the growing demand for more ro- bust and user-friendlier applications that easily tie into other core systems. "Companies don't have the luxury any more to wait weeks for reports on the profitability of business decisions in increasingly fast paced markets. New analytics solutions are being developed around this need where businesses can make better decisions, faster," said Nina Sandy, analyst at Nucleus Research. Customers investing in new analytics solutions today are looking for improved decision-making capabilities that over- come past issues with data quality and time constraints to meet business de- mand in competitive markets. Changes in technology and business practices across the board, brought about largely by cloud and big data trends, have driven a need for increased functionality and resulting higher ROIs. A significant increase in the number of analytics and business intelligence vendors during recent years has pushed competitive pricing strategies and faster deployments for customers. "Ease of use" integration is touted as a significant sell- ing point for customers looking for solu- tions ranging from the niche market to broader solution sets. Customers today now have greater choice of offerings, all providing some level of reduced IT de- pendency, productivity gains, and inte- gration into existing systems. The full Report is available at www. NucleusResearch.com new RepoRt exAmines fActoRs BehinD smAll Business success Small businesses are vital components of the nation's economy, accounting for 14.3 million of the 22.9 million net new jobs created between 1993 and mid-2013, according to the Small Business Admin- istration's March 2014 Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business. It is thus vital that the business community know what makes a financially healthy small business. As part of the Small Business Finan- cial Health Initiative, more than 19,000 businesses were surveyed to uncover the behaviors and practices of success- ful small businesses. Researchers created an algorithm to analyze the more than 900 responses from companies across the country. These small businesses were large and small, profitable and unprofit- able, and had owners with a wide range of experience. Ultimately researchers determined each company's level of fi- nancial health and scored them on a range from "excellent" to "poor" based on three categories: • knowledge about financing products • the credit experiences of business owners • financial planning and management practices The results showed that businesses in the "excellent" range had experience nav- igating the lending landscape, had more available credit and frequently monitored their business cash flow. Whereas busi- nesses scoring in the "poor" range had less knowledge about financing products, lower personal credit scores, less access to financing and fewer formal financial management practices in place. "The question of whether businesses have adequate access to the financial products and services they need is com- plex," said Chinwe Onyeagoro, CEO and co-founder of FundWell, a technology platform that helps small businesses ac- cess loans. "This study begins to shed light on some of the factors that affect the quantity and quality of demand for credit." "It likely comes as no surprise that knowledge, experience and mature busi- ness practices are associated with healthy businesses," said Dr. Craig Everett, di- rector of Pepperdine University's Pri- vate Capital Markets Project and lead researcher on this study. "What is most exciting, though, is that this study will provide an analytical framework with which the financial health of individual businesses can be assessed." The study also explored the condi- tions of women- and minority-owned small businesses, and found that those businesses scored lower than their peers in the credit experience and financial planning and management categories but achieved higher scores in the funding product knowledge section. "The dearth of financial information on small business health restricts access to credit. The small business financial health index introduced in this report serves as a new tool for identifying deficiencies that need to be addressed over time to help close that credit gap," said Ian Galloway, Senior Research Associate, Community Development, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Small Business Financial Health Initiative is a joint project of the Com- munity Development divisions of the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and San Francisco, Pepperdine University Capital Markets Project and FundWell, Inc. The purpose of the initiative is to raise awareness about small business fi- nancial health, in order to highlight poli- cies, investments, financial and technical assistance resources needed to help small businesses achieve their goals. This report presents the results and findings from a Financial Health Business Survey that was administered in 2013 and initiates a Business OPeRATiOns N e w s 30 octoBeR 2014 | fuel oil news | www.fueloilnews.com