WHY SMB FINANCE TEAMS DON’T NEED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Business intelligence (BI) is one of the most overused—and misunderstood—terms in
modern financial operations.

It often conjures up images of complex dashboards and data lakes, sounding strategic and powerful, but not necessarily aligned with what accounting and finance professionals in small and mid-sized businesses really need.

That’s because most finance and accounting teams don’t need “intelligence” in the BI sense. They need clear, actionable answers to their everyday financial questions.

Reporting is a Three-part Process

Typically, there are two dominant reporting strategies: centralized BI reporting and self-service reporting. All reporting, regardless of the platform or strategy, can be divided into three basic tasks:

Design – Defining the question, identifying the data, and determining how it should be presented.
Generation – Pulling the data, applying filters or calculations, and creating the actual report.
Distribution – Getting the report into the hands of people who need it, whether through dashboards, emails, or exported files.

In centralized reporting, all three steps are typically handled by a dedicated BI team. These professionals have been trained in enterprise-grade tools such as IBM Cognos or SAP BusinessObjects, with “trained” being the operative word. Cognos report authoring, for example, often takes several weeks of formal instruction just to become proficient. These are not tools a typical AP or travel manager is expected—or willing—to learn.

The benefit of this model in certain situations is control. Businesses with hundreds of departments and regulatory compliance obligations rely on it to ensure consistency and accuracy at scale. However, the tradeoff is speed. Requesting a new report can involve submitting a ticket and waiting several days or weeks for the BI team to complete it. If the business user’s question isn’t clear, or changes in the meantime, the result may be a well-constructed report that doesn’t help.

Self-service Reporting Operates Differently
Self-service reporting flips this model on its head. For most accounting and finance teams in SMBs, self-service reporting is more practical and better suited to the way they work.

Instead of routing every request through a centralized team, the design of the report is done by a finance or accounting manager, the person who actually needs the information. Report generation and distribution are often handled by their staff, sometimes on a recurring schedule, sometimes ad hoc.

Self-service reporting tools are intentionally built for non-technical users. Instead of focusing on advanced analytics or complex integrations, they prioritize simplicity, speed, and usability. Their goal isn’t to turn a finance or accounting manager into a data scientist; rather, it’s to give them answers without requiring a middleman.

This shift is especially important for SMBs, where there may not be a dedicated BI team at all. Even in companies that do have analytics resources, business users often can’t afford to wait. Questions like “Which vendors are billing outside contract terms?” or “What card charges haven’t been reconciled?” need answers today, not next Thursday.

The Language of BI Doesn’t Resonate With Everyone
Here’s the deeper issue: SMB leaders don’t speak in BI terms. They don’t ask for dashboards. They don’t say, “I need a drill-down on quarterly trends.” What they say is, “Why wasn’t this invoice paid?” or “Who approved this expense?”

That language mismatch is one reason traditional BI tools struggle to gain traction outside executive and analyst teams. The tools aren’t built for how SMB users think. More importantly, the job they’re trying to do isn’t to analyze trends, it’s to act.

The value of self-service reporting lies in its pragmatism. It’s not about making everyone in the company data-savvy. It’s about removing friction between a business question and the data needed to answer it. In this sense, self-service tools don’t replace BI; they sidestep it.

Making Complex Reporting Accessible
One of the most transformative aspects of self-service reporting is that it makes complex reporting accessible to everyone. What once required writing queries, navigating a schema, or calling in a BI expert can now be done by an accounting manager with no formal training in analytics.

This accessibility matters more than ever. Finance and accounting staff are already drowning in responsibilities: month-end close, vendor follow-ups, travel spend reconciliation, and so on. The last thing they need is another layer of process just to get the data that drives their work.

By putting reporting tools directly in the hands of those who use them, organizations enable faster decision-making, quicker interventions, and, ultimately, better outcomes.

This is often described as “democratizing” data, but it’s more than a buzzword. It means empowering accounting and financial operations teams to identify issues early and act, without having to wait for someone else to tell them what the data says.

Why Centralized Reporting Still Has a Place
This is not to say centralized reporting is obsolete. For high-level KPIs, Board reporting, and regulatory compliance, a structured, centralized approach is often the right fit. Consistency, quality control, and security are non-negotiable in those contexts.

The real problem is when businesses apply centralized reporting to every use case, even those where it adds more friction than value. Not every report needs to be routed through BI. And not every question needs a dashboard.

Operational managers aren’t trying to optimize data strategy. They’re trying to get through the day without a fire drill. They don’t always need “intelligence.” They always need clarity.

The Real Goal: Reporting that Works
At the end of the day, this isn’t about picking sides. It’s about choosing the right tool for the job.

If you’re a CFO, controller, or finance leader at an SMB, or an advisor to these titles, and your teams are still submitting tickets to IT for basic reports, it may be time to reassess. What teams really need is reporting that works—tools that answer their questions, fit their workflows, and let them move quickly. And that starts by letting go of the notion that “business intelligence” is the goal.