I have many years of experience working in IT, primarily in the area of databases, data manipulation, reporting, business intelligence. I'm wondering if that could translate into a business opportunity for me working with small businesses. Basically, I'm wondering if all the experience I have working with Fortune 500 companies could be useful to a small shop.

Virtually all large corporations also have a large IT staff, who maintain some type of enterprise application like SAP or maybe something homegrown. The executives demand operational reports and analysis to evaluate finances, sales, marketing, etc. If data needs to be moved, modified, translated, etc, there is someone who can do it.

On the other hand, my guess is that most small businesses run on something like Quickbooks and the owner relies on whatever reports are provided by the accounting package and maybe some basic spreadsheet functionality.

I'm wondering if a small business could benefit from someone who could provide some of the more advanced data functions that someone like a CEO of a large firm may have. I'm talking about turning data into information. Maybe the business owner doesn't even realize the value of his/her data.

I certainly understand that cost becomes a limiting factor. However, I'm thinking that there must be some business model that could support this, if the need is there. I may be just talking about basic consulting here. I don't know. Or maybe it's something more; like outsourcing some basic IT functions that normally would be cost prohibitive for the small guy to run in-house.

This is currently nothing more than a thought, in it's most basic sense. I'd appreciate any thoughts on it's viability.

There are tons of "plug-ins" for QB. Literally hundreds. Go to the QB site and check out what's available.

I did see what looks to be a pretty good analysis tool there. Thanks for pointing that out.

I think that the fees you could justify for such a service would be beyond the reach of most small businesses. However, in the UK the classification for a 'small business' is anything with a turnover of less than 1.3 million - so it depends on your target market.

I have no doubt that your experience can be turned into a business, but you need to think about exactly who your target client base is. The term 'small-business' is just too broad to draw a conclusion of viability.

I personally would pay £150 for my FA to do a tax-return, so your offer to verbalise pure numbers in a way that your client understands is much more specialised than most people would be willing to pay for.

With this in mind, maybe you should target larger corporations.