Contents

• Background and Rationale 2
• Literature Review 3
• Necessity of Replacement of Business Information Silos and Spreadsheets 3
• IBM Cognos 3
• IBM Smart Cloud 4
• SMEs in South Africa 5
• Research Problem Statement 5
• Research Design 5
• Research Methods 6
• Data Collection Method 6
• Sampling Method 6
• Research Approach 7
• Timeframe and Budget 7
• Gantt Chart 7
• Budget 8
• Chapter Layout 8
• References 9

Description

The Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are considered as a major provider towards a nation’s economy and business. But in the contemporary scenario, competition between SMEs as well as between SMEs and larger firms has come up. The SMEs are on the lower side of possessing resources, capital or labor compared to that of the larger firms. Thus, innovative and smart ways or technique are necessary for SMEs to gain competitive advantage and sustain in this competitive market while moving forward to launch itself as a larger enterprise.
Adapting to the various Business Intelligence systems in the technical field is very significant in this modern market. It has become necessary for any organization to search for a more effective system to store and analyze the data with a reduction in cost simultaneously.
It is found that the SMEs of South Africa are facing several challenges towards their operation and developments. The incorporation of advanced Business Intelligence systems in the SMEs can help in their problems towards analyzing and financing, and procuring the market with adopting to the IBM products; IBM Smart Cloud and IBM Cognos. These technologies are cost effective and allow the SMEs to reduce the job roles and help in storing and analyzing data and create reports which were generally limited to spreadsheets that required both extra manual labor and time and also were not full proof. Thus, the aim of this paper is to realize the impact these IBM products can impose upon the SMEs of South Africa, with a special focus to Gauteng.