To make effective decisions, the majority of both mid-sized and large companies use <A HREF="http://www.midmarket.eweek.com/c/a/News/Making-sense-of-Business-Intelligence/?kc=EWKNLMMS080108STR3">some type of business intelligence solution.</A> While smaller companies may get away with an Excel spreadsheet-based decision support system, functions like reporting, ad hoc queries, graphic dashboards, integration with existing applications, metadata management, workflow and collaboration, sophisticated analysis and predictive modeling and data mining are critical for growing companies.