Access to the right BI answers questions that can keep sales leaders up at night, such as:

    * "How do sales compare this quarter to last?"
    * "What does that mean year-to-date?"
    * "Why and what does that mean to our overall performance?"

A company called BlueGranite helps answer those questions and more. The business intelligence firm gives clients easy access to complex reporting and analysis of their business performance. In addition to sales leaders, the web-based dashboard-accessible information is also of great interest to CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, CTOs and assorted senior execs.

The Kalamazoo, Michigan-based services integrator does such a good job, in fact, that Microsoft just named them "Exceptional Sales Management Partner of the Year" for 2011, and will hand out the award during Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference this week in Los Angeles.

I had the chance to interview one of their partners, Mike Depoian, who is also VP of sales, for my post today. He explains how they make BI agile.

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "ＭＳ 明朝"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria Math"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }.MsoChpDefault { font-size: 10pt; font-family: Cambria; }div.WordSection1 { page: WordSection1; }

Read more. (http://www.nf5.com/blog_entries/view/intelligent-business-with-s3)