Most businesses start tightening their purse strings during challenging economic cycles and IT investments are quite frequently the first to be cut. This isn't a new phenomenon or a revelation, but rather obvious to most business people.

When your company goes into survival mode your choices are to focus IT spending on saving money through reducing inefficiencies or creating money by being innovative, or both. Most decision makers appear to focus their energies on cost cutting IT projects and the appetite for risk is much lower than usual.

Business Intelligence (BI) describes the software-based tools used to collect, analyze, and share information that businesses accumulate throughout their normal course of operations. Large corporations have for years used BI to improve the way they do business, giving them a competitive advantage.

Positives and Negatives Affecting the U.S. Economy.