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Even business intelligence firms can learn a thing or two about doing business in the digital era. Just ask Bowman & Partners, a Roanoke, Texas-based startup that mines a wealth of brand and consumer data to create customer management strategies and marketing initiatives for clients that include Comcast Business, United Healthcare and Windstream Communications.

Like many businesses, Bowman & Partners has shifted much of its workload to the cloud, and when principal Paul Bowman began chasing a contract with a major healthcare firm, he proposed a cloud-based dashboard to gather information straight from the company's call centers, offering insights into medical activity and patient trends from across the country.

Not so fast, the healthcare company said. "Because we would be collecting and housing personal health information in the cloud, they let us know pretty early into the negotiations that we'd need to expand our level of insurance," Bowman says. "If anything were to go wrong, we needed to make sure we were covered."