Here is a brief excerpt from an article by John Grossman for The New York Times. Contrary to what many business leaders may think, Big Data in combination with appropriate analytics can be of substantial value to any company, however small and whatever its nature may be. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo Credit: Chris Richards for The New York Times

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Brian Janezic, 27, was in the equipment room of one of the two Auto Wash Express self-service locations he owns in Tucson, going through his cleaning supplies and vending machine items to determine what to reorder, when it hit him. “We have machines that automatically size and wash a car, mix chemicals, activate pumps, turn on lights — and here I am still counting inventory by hand.”

An online search introduced him to FileMaker Pro, a software product well suited to small businesses and tailored to the iPads that Mr. Janezic envisioned for himself and his three remote employees — not to mention the employees serving the six Arizona Auto Wash Express locations owned by his parents. “Now we can pull up any of our sites and see what’s on hand,” he said, adding that the FileMaker software “creates a PDF of a purchase order for us to send to one of our local suppliers or an online supplier.”

That was only part of the savings. Before Mr. Janezic installed sensors linked to FileMaker on each location’s eight drums of carwash chemicals — windshield bug removal solutions, pre-wash chemicals for tires, waxes, glass cleaners — monitoring use meant taking a yardstick to each drum, noting liquid levels and measuring again a week later. Gallons consumed divided by the number of cars washed told him how much of each solution was consumed per wash.

“Now we’re able to monitor those levels continuously,” he said. “So instead of having two data points in the span of a week, we’ll have 500 data points. And we can do that across our entire company. We might want to see how much pre-soak we’re using, because we have a standard we want to keep within.” So the new system improves quality control, and it can send a text message or email alert should, say, a valve stick open, potentially draining a $250 drum of soap.

A wealth of information that some call big data is becoming increasingly available to small businesses. Such information was once available only to big corporations with vast computing power and deep information technology departments — and more recently to online start-up companies with data-mining capabilities.

In 2010, just 1.7 percent of small businesses were using business intelligence software, according to a survey of companies with fewer than 100 employees conducted by IDC, whose analysts provide information technology advice to businesses small and large. By last year, 9.2 percent had adopted such tools, reported Ray Boggs, a small-business market analyst at IDC, citing easier-to-use products and lower prices as prime drivers of the increase.

“You don’t need a degree. You don’t need a manual,” said Ramon Ray, co-creator and host of the annual Small Business Summit, where entrepreneurs meet with technology and marketing experts. “You can drag and drop spreadsheets, upload a file — even from your phone. If you have fleets of vehicles, you run those vehicles better; you can staff better, because you know where your employees should be, and when. The new tools provide better customer insights, so you know better what to sell them or what not to sell them; you can see which of your products has the best profit margin. You don’t have to do things on gut check anymore.”

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Here’s a link to the complete article.

John Grossmann is a freelance journalist and book author, based in Greater New York City area. He co-authored One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World (with CD) with Gordon Hempton and his articles have been published in several dozen magazines and newspapers.