The Boston Globe ran a great story on Sunday, February 15. Titled, Amid Recession, Vein of Optimism ^[2], it featured companies in the greater Boston area that see our current economic situation to be one of great opportunity.

Instead of hunkering down, they are growing and expanding.

Another company that’s growing – and hiring! – is Birst ^[3], the first on-demand, self-service, automated business intelligence and analytics solution that’s being marketed to companies of all sizes — from one-person firms to small and mid-size businesses (SMBs).

I had the opportunity to talk to Birst’s Director of Marketing, Barbara Lewis, about the company and why it’s growing so fast.

(Quick fact: Business Intelligence (BI) is the act of integrating disparate data and then analyzing it in order to produce a comprehensive picture of a business.)

According to Barbara, business intelligence applications have been around for decades, but the solutions offered were incredibly big, complicated, and took months or years to deploy. In addition, the customer had to do a lot of the work.

“BI systems were generally sold to large enterprises,” says Barbara. “The process was akin to purchasing a car by its various parts and then having to assemble the car yourself. These systems were so big and so expensive, only very large companies could afford them.”

Enter Birst in 2004 — or Success Metrics, as the company first called itself. The company was conducting on-demand BI at enterprise scale for Fortune 50 companies when the founders realized they had built a modern BI solution that any company could use.

Launched in September 2008, the automated Birst solution lets companies upload data from a variety of sources, including Excel spreadsheets, databases, and enterprise applications,analyze it, and then easily share reports and dashboards.

I took the Birst virtual demo and was astounded at what the tool can do — a reaction that many of Birst’s customers have when they first encounter Birst.

“People’s jaws drop when they see the demo,” says Barbara, “because they instantly ‘get it.’ Birst is the first integrated BI solution that’s automated and cost-effective. Instead of counting deployment in months or years, you can count it in days or weeks.”

Birst was so successful, the company changed its name in November 2008 — and since then, has been growing rapidly and adding employees to its engineering, sales, and marketing departments.

Some of its recent marketing activities include hiring a public relations agency and sending out a commissioned humorous card ^[4] (designed by artist Kevin Pope exclusively for Birst) that pokes fun at the competition.

According to Barbara, Birst isn’t just for small or mid-sized  companies. Currently, they are in talks with a national retailer who already has a multi-million dollar BI system; however, one of the company’s departments doesn’t have access to the data because the existing system is so expensive and complex that it was only rolled out to certain parts of the company, leaving other departments out. 

Said the retailer’s department team, “We want something for us that fits our budget and our needs.”

“Birst is the perfect tool for right now,” says Barbara. “People want to know more about their businesses. They need to know what is driving revenue and costs. You can’t do this without business intelligence.

“Because Birst is so fast and so affordable, you can get this intelligence within days or weeks — and have immediate impact on your business.”

One caveat: Although Birst automates the integration and analysis of data, you do have to know what you’re looking for, you have to format the Excel data appropriately, and you have to know how to set up the report templates in order to glean the insight you’re looking for. So yes, there is a learning curve.

However, once I signed up for Birst, an employee emailed me and offered to show me how it all works. As of this post I have not done the one-on-one tutorial but am scheduled to do so next week. 

You can learn more about Birst by visiting its Website and taking the tour and/or demo ^[5]. The company offers four price points depending on the number of users.

(Thank you to Vojtech Horna of Atomic Public Relations ^[6] for replying to my request for positive business stories and for setting up this interview. Atomic PR is the agency of record for Birst.)