Бизнес интелигентни системи в малките и средни предприятия – състояние, възможности и практически решения
Business intelligence systems in the small and medium- sized enterprises – status, possibilities and practical solutions

Summary/Abstract: Part One of the study presents an analysis of some of the data collected through a research on the status of and the problems related to the IT infrastructure of the Bulgarian small and medium-sized enterprises. Thus some problems related to the condition and utilization of the ICT were outlined. The principal thesis of the authors is that in most cases the modernization of the IT infrastructure and the capitalization on the benefits provided by the Web technologies and management systems in the small and medium-sized enterprises are hindered by purely subjective causes. An attempt was made to find the answers to three key questions: Do the owners of SMEs consider the information technologies as means for better efficiency in the period of crisis; Do the Bulgarian SMEs have the potential, despite the complicated economic situation, to recognize the important role of the ICT, and particularly the software applications, for their survival, and if yes – how can they identify and take advantage of this potential in the current period; What is the attitude of the owners of SMEs to the business-related software and particularly to the business intelligence systems (BIS). To find the answers to these questions a research was conducted on the following closely related fields of the SMEs’ IT infrastructure: business management systems, informational infrastructure, implementation of the Internet technologies in business, e-commerce and possibilities for utilization of software services by the SMEs. The second part of the study outlines the new trend – the implementation of open-source BI components. A framework of the functional capacity characteristic of the BI platforms is presented. The authors point out the advantages and disadvantages of the open-sources BI components as well as their architectural models: for data Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL); data storage (Data Warehouse); data mining (Data Mining). The architecture of the On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is explained. Part Three describes an approach for selection of open-source software for development of a business intelligence system. It is based on experimental approbation of the most popular BI components of the most common types conducted within Project D002-116/2008 “Methodology for development of a distributed business intelligence system for small and medium-sized enterprises”, financed by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Science. The evaluation was conducted in compliance with the “Methodology for evaluation of software products for distributed BIS” developed within the same project. The authors used five groups of indices - general, technological, efficiency, financial and economic, and information security. Conclusions are provided for each of the evaluated components.

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