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Business Intelligence Archive

A deep dive into the InfoBurst Connectors

By
Chris Martin
Published: May 23, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, IBIS, InfoBurst, InfoBurst Dash, ProductsTags: , , , , , , , , ,
A deep dive into the InfoBurst Connectors

Here is a sneak-peek of the InfoBurst® Dashboard Connectors In-Depth talk  to be presented in the Dashboard Data Management, Dashboard Delivery & HTML5 Apps with InfoBurst talk at the InfoBurst User Conference – IBIS 2013.

Back when we were taking another look at InfoBurst, we also wanted to take another look at how InfoBurst communicated with the then BusinessObjects Xcelsius 4.5.  At that time we used the built in XML connector to bring data from InfoBurst into our users’ dashboards.  This would require users to know the ID numbers of the Xml Data Source (XDS) objects in InfoBurst along with the name of the range that you wanted to pull into your dashboard.  This would cause many “silly” errors of either having the wrong ID number, or a slight misspelling of the range name.

When we started to look a fresh on how to do this, we decided to leverage the new Xcelsius SDK.  This meant that we were able to write our own connectors that will communicate with the InfoBurst Enterprise server and take away the “guess work” of referencing the data caches.  Thus the InfoBurst Connectors were born.  With these connectors we were now able to browse the InfoBurst Enterprise system for the object you want to reference in the connector, which eliminates the need to remember object ID numbers.  Next we also enabled the ability to browse for which “data source” you want to reference in your Cache Connector, and even which query you want to get values from in the Database Connector.

In addition to making it easier to setup the connectors, we’ve also added the ability to migrate a dashboard between say a development and production environment.  We built a component called the InfoBurst Connection Manager.  This will allow users to setup multiple connection profiles, say in our case “Development” and “Production”.  As long as the referenced objects are in the same folder locations in both platforms and have the same queries and data sources, then the dashboard will migrate on over to the new environment.  This means a dashboard can be built and tested in a development environment, and then moved over to the production environment when it’s ready without the need for the dashboard developer to “remap” all of the connectors.

By leveraging the Xcelsius SDK we were able to add new connectors which have gone beyond just data retrieval and writeback.  We’ve created three “utility connectors” which came about by requests directly from our dashboard developers.  First, we created a connector called the CrossTab Builder which will allow users to create a crosstab on the fly from a data table that has been built up in the dashboard.  Second, when users have a crosstab in their dashboard, either from the CrossTab Builder or the built in crosstab options for database queries, XDC data sources, and cache queries, they can use the CrossTab Flip connector which will flip the X and Y axis values.  And finally, we have another connector which will allow users to save excel ranges from their dashboard into different sheets of an excel file for analysis.  I will be going into more detail on these connectors during the talk; after all, this is a sneak peek.

At the end of my talk, I’ll get a chance to show something that I’m personally excited about.  I’ll get to show you some advanced debugging.  Debugging which will help you not only find potential data issues going to and from the InfoBurst server, but also detect potential performance issues with how and when the connectors are being fired.  Also, you can use the same tool to replay requests which can simplify reproducing an issue greatly.  I’d suggest taking a look at the tool first to get yourself familiarized with it.  It’s a web debugging tool that Telerik recently took over from Microsoft called Fiddler2.  I suggest downloading the release build for .NET 2.0 as that is currently the only stable release right now.  Telerik is currently working on a .NET 4.0 version.

That’s it for this sneak peek.  And this is my last one for this conference.  I hope you’ve enjoyed reading through them, and I hope it gave you a pretty good idea of what to expect during my talks.  And, of course, I hope to see you there at the InfoBurst User Conference.  Being able to see our customers face to face and to talk in real time about their needs and ideas is what makes our conferences great.  And great not only for us, but for our customers as well.  I’m very excited for our first ever InfoBurst User Conference.  This topic here will be discussed, and many more in a very open format.  Check it out on our InfoBurst User Conference webpage.  I’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!  You can register for the InfoBurst User Conference online just by clicking on the “Register” button at limitlessbi.com.

Yellowfin BI – A Fast Attractive Fish in the Business Intelligence Ocean

By
Paul
Published: May 6, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, YellowfinTags: , , ,
Yellowfin BI – A Fast Attractive Fish in the Business Intelligence Ocean

The Yellowfin tuna is a very attractive fish with a dark blue body, silver belly and bright yellow fins and tail. Their rear dorsal and anal fins can look like scimitars in mature adults giving them the appearance of a flying crossbow when they jump out of the water. Their body shape is sleek, powerful and built for speed and they can swim up to 50 mph enabling them to cross entire oceans.
Yellowfin BI is a totally integrated business intelligence tool that, like the fish it is named after, is very attractive and very fast. It is also starting to make some real waves in the increasingly crowded sea of business intelligence solutions.

It’s intuitive user interface both on the PC and mobile makes viewing, interaction and discovery a veritable pleasure of the senses. Whether you are navigating reports, performing drill anywhere analysis or delving into dashboards, everything is just a click or a touch to reveal the next dazzling visualization of your data. The functionality in Yellowfin BI is everything you would expect to find in a next generation BI tool – visual reporting and analysis, powerful dashboards, location intelligence , mobile BI, collaboration, alerting, a full metadata layer, comprehensive security, scheduling and publishing.

Yet what makes Yellowfin BI stand out from the other BI fish in the sea is that it is a totally integrated solution – one tool that does it all and where all the functionality works seamlessly together. After going through more than a decade of BI suites with so many overlapping tools that often compete rather than complement each other, it is a breath of fresh air to find a full function and completely integrated BI tool.

And, the best part is that Yellowfin BI is available to be purchased on an annual subscription basis inclusive of maintenance starting with a 5 user license for just $3,000 a year. You get all the functionality in just one tool for a price that everybody can afford. You can add or remove licenses incrementally as you need – incredibly simple and so logical.

This is the future of business intelligence tools – attractive, fast, simple and affordable.

InfoSol will be featuring Yellowfin BI at IBIS 2013 – www.limitlessbi.com – with a one day pre-seminar hands-on training class – see also http://infosolblog.com/yellowfin-deep-dive-at-ibis-2013-hands-on-training/ . Then on the Monday, one of the keynotes will be delivered by Glen Rabie, the visionary CEO and co-founder of Yellowfin, discussing the future of BI. Glen will also be presenting in the Next Generation of Business Intelligence Executive Seminar track http://limitlessbi.com/the-next-generation-of-business-intelligence

I predict that we are going to be seeing a lot of Yellowfin BI emerging everywhere and our oceans of data will be all the better for it.

InfoSol partners with and integrates Yellowfin Business Intelligence

By
InfoSol
Published: May 3, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, InfoSol, Products, YellowfinTags:
InfoSol partners with and integrates Yellowfin Business Intelligence

Arizona-based provider of best-of-breed information systems and Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, InfoSol, has signed an official partnership agreement with global BI software vendor, Yellowfin.

The agreement will see InfoSol offer Yellowfin’s easy-to-use BI software, and associated implementation and training services, throughout America and Canada.  As part of the agreement, InfoSol has integrated Yellowfin into its popular BI report and dashboard publishing solution, InfoBurst®.

InfoSol President and CEO, Paul Grill, said that partnering with Yellowfin was a strategic decision.

“At InfoSol, we’re passionate about Business Intelligence, and love providing our clients with the most innovative and effective solutions, to meet their wide range of business needs,” said Grill.  “Yellowfin is a completely integrated BI solution, providing visual dashboards, query and analysis, reporting, Location Intelligence, Collaborative BI and Mobile BI in a single, easy-to-use and incredibly affordable product.”

“The addition of Yellowfin to InfoSol’s BI offering provides us with a great solution for the small and medium sized business, that they can grow with incrementally, achieving almost instant return on investment.”

Yellowfin BI is officially available through InfoSol immediately.

“We’re delighted to be working with InfoSol because they too have a real passion for innovative Business Intelligence,” said Yellowfin CEO, Glen Rabie.  “We’re confident that Yellowfin will offer InfoSol’s customers a highly intuitive, interactive and scalable solution, appropriate for all user and deployment types, from a single business department to enterprise wide rollouts.”

In addition, InfoSol is set to release InfoBurst Y – a solution which packages Yellowfin and InfoBurst® together, to offer a new total BI scheduling, bursting and publishing platform.  InfoBurst Y is now publicly available, offered on an annual subscription basis.

Yellowfin Head of Operations North America, Justin Wright, said that InfoSol’s reputation – as a provider of “first-class” enterprise software solutions and service excellence – would help bolster Yellowfin’s existing standing across the USA and Canada.

“Yellowfin has had a strong presence in the USA, and placed a great deal of importance on the North American market, since its inception in 2003,” said Wright.  “InfoSol’s depth of BI experience and knowledge in this strategically integral market, combined with their impeccable record for implementing outstanding BI projects, makes them a crucial part of Yellowfin’s future plans in the region.”

InfoSol is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona and was established in 1997. InfoSol Canada (based in Windsor, Ontario) and InfoSol Ltd. (based in Cardiff, UK) will also offer the Yellowfin BI and InfoBurst Y solutions.

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About InfoSol

InfoSol® is a visionary provider of information systems solutions delivering quality, compelling and effective Business Intelligence (BI) and custom applications. Understanding a client’s specific business and unique needs is always a part of any solution we provide.

With more than fifteen years of experience in providing end-to-end BI applications, InfoSol sees beyond the data to deliver visionary solutions that inspire.

InfoSol is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona and operates worldwide.  For more information, visit www.infosol.com

 

About Yellowfin

Yellowfin is a global Business Intelligence (BI) software vendor passionate about making BI easy.  Yellowfin is headquartered and developed in Melbourne, Australia, offering a highly intuitive 100 percent Web-based reporting and analytics solution.  Founded in 2003 in response to the complexity and costs associated with implementing and using traditional BI tools, Yellowfin is a leader in mobile, collaborative and embeddable BI as well as Location Intelligence and data visualization.  For more information, visit www.yellowfinbi.com

 

What is Business Intelligence software?

Business Intelligence (BI) refers to a broad range of computer software applications and tools used to report, analyze and present data in a range of formats, to help businesses identify trends and opportunities, and support fundamental decision-making.

For further media information, interviews, images or product demonstration, please contact:

For regular updates and news, follow Yellowfin on Twitter (@YellowfinBI), LinkedIn (Yellowfin Business Intelligence) or email pr@yellowfin.bi to subscribe to Yellowfin’s free e-newsletter.

D is for Dashboards

By
Runali Ghosh
Published: March 26, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, IBISTags: , , ,
D is for Dashboards

Here is a sneak-peak of some of the 12 Ds to be discussed in the Iron Chef Dashboard track in Limitless BI conference – IBIS 2013.

As I started putting my train of thoughts together for the Dashboards track of IBIS 2013, I was listing the important elements of implementing a successful dashboard project. I was also trying to come up with a way of presenting those key points so our attendees can remember very easily when they go back to develop actual dashboards. In the process I suddenly discovered the interesting recurrence of words starting with D and guess what ? I had a quick D list. Soon the D list became part of the course. I was so excited I couldn’t resist till June to talk about them.  Here are the first five:

Data

D-for-Dashboards-imageData is the most important piece of the puzzle called BI dashboards. Actually it plays a critical role in running modern business, at least it should, and hence it ranks first in my D list.

Data is key. Business acquires raw data which by itself does not generate much significance. But when put into context, relation and interpretation, data results in Information which in turn is collected and processed to identify patterns based on experience; and now we have knowledge. What do we do with this mass of knowledge for it to be useful? Analyze, ask questions, understand the underlying principles and provide answers so business can make more cognitive decisions and gain competitive advantage – in other words, gain intelligence about the business.

Dashboard is one of the vehicles to traverse this journey from data to intelligence. Without a doubt, accessing the right data for your dashboard is an essential and critical step. As simple as it sounds, you will face challenges in every phase of the development to get the right data, sometimes simply accessing the data. You need to ensure the availability, quality, and authenticity of the data. Any failure in those areas will highly compromise adoption and usability of your dashboard. From our years of experience in real world deployments, in this bootcamp, we will guide you on how to achieve this goal and prevent a failed project. There will be more topics related to data – for example how to process, manipulate and optimize them in context of the tool.

Design

Being a visualization mechanism for delivering information dashboards demand extremely high importance on effective visual design. Whether it is a traditional single page summary view dashboard or modern multi-layered dashboard app, it needs to follow all the principles of data visualization. Only then can you successfully provide consistent, easy, intuitive and quick consumption of the most important information. This should not be confused with the mere shiny look and feel of a dashboard. We will cover the process of applying the various best practices, design principles and marketing standards in the context of end user’s requirement, connectivity options, data volume and audience. At the end of the course you will not just be able to display charts but will understand how to deliver a visually compelling and exciting application to your end user.

Device

Dashboards must allow consumption beyond the desktop. Proliferation of mobile devices among business users has mandated availability of dashboards on a variety of devices. While until very recently there were hard limitations on technology for flash based dashboards to render on iOS devices, there are also many mobile-handicapped dashboards merely due to bad design considerations. Now that SAP Dashboards (Xcelsius) has introduced mobility, the importance of following design considerations has become more severe than ever. The need for thoughtful consideration of handheld device friendly designs, various approaches towards going mobile, limitations set by the tool, degree of summarization and connectivity options for mobile dashboards has shot up immensely. You will get to see the various methods available for building dashboards for mobile in addition to detailed discussion of the above considerations, pros and cons of available options against one another with examples and hands on.

Delivery

D-for-Dashboard-DeliveryThis is one very important consideration many dashboard developers put aside until towards end of the project which results into lot of unexpected changes at the last hour – something every developer must do everything to avoid. It is very crucial to ask the end user/ business analyst of the dashboard project very early on how they want their dashboards to be delivered to them – sent via email? Accessed from a portal? Need offline capability once delivered? Sent to mobile device? Need customized data bursting? Non-BOE environment? BOE security enforced? All these questions and more should be asked during requirement gathering and evaluated/re-evaluated at the various phases of iterative development cycle. Not every capability comes out of the box, many of them can be achieved with partner add-ons and integration kits but they are often the burning requirements for our customers. We will discuss different design considerations to keep in mind to meet your end users’ goal.

Dollar

D-for-Dashboard-DollarsWhy should a technical developer care about this? For business what will matter is ROI, but for IT $ will translate to the duration and deadline of the project. BI projects often face scope, schedule and consequent budget creep. Though it is common it is not completely unavoidable. Thorough requirement gathering, timely availability of the right resources, involvement of business, proper change control, mockup building with the decision making team and correct iteration cycle can prevent many unplanned changes and schedule slippage. IT needs to clearly communicate any realistic estimation and understand the consequences of budget overrun. Wise planning will not only stop a project from being scrapped but also gain substantial credibility from business for any future deployment. You can also limit or extend the functionality of your dashboard with use of third-party add-ons available across SAP ecosystem based on approved budget. We are going to discuss several useful add-on features you can enrich your dashboard with and how to conduct the aforementioned activities in most efficient manner.

 

Whether you are wearing a developer, business analyst or project manager hat or all of them, it is very important to understand these key elements of a dashboard project. The goal of this track is not just to help build your technical skills, but capacitate you with all other aspects of an entire end to end project, their pitfalls and how to overcome them. The rest of the Ds focus on the facets that make or break a dashboard project, and will be discussed in a future article. We hope this has whetted your appetite for the upcoming Dashboard Design Iron Chef Bootcamp using SAP Dashboards 4.x.  See you at IBIS 2013.

 

BI and a One-Eyed Horse

By
Chris Kruger
Published: February 4, 2013Posted in: Business IntelligenceTags:

Horseback Riding

I have this weird perception in life to where everything I see I end up relating to Business Intelligence. This makes me sound like an extremely dull person, I know, but it does tend to create some good stories. As you can imagine, if you try and relate EVERYTHING to BI, there will be some pretty weak correlations in the comparisons. I try to use my best judgment before going public with these stories, but I may have had a lapse in judgment recently. It was either a great success or epic failure. Either way, I’m sure the people listening remembered it. That is my goal, whether they remember it in a good way or bad, at least they will take something away.

My lovely fiancée lost a bet to me and had to take me out on a date. The date she chose was to take me horseback riding for the very first time. Now I’m pretty adventurous, so I was excited about it. I really didn’t know what to expect and as we drove up to the ranch. I found out that I was most curious about what horse I would ride. I saw several horses standing there and I couldn’t help but assess which horse would be best for me. Luckily the workers chose… probably for the best. So I saw a wide array of horses, from huge muscular beasts to elderly mares with their posture in the shape of a “U”. I originally thought that I could handle the horse that looked like a race horse. This would be fun I thought, until I started imaging being bucked off and cracking my head open on the desert landscape. Then I looked at another horse. This one had the posture of the “U” variety, was missing an eye, and there were flies buzzing around its face. I thought I could definitely handle this one but I wasn’t too confident in its ability to haul me around the desert for a couple of hours. Nonetheless, I was paired with a horse somewhere in the middle. The only negative part about this horse was that it stopped at every bush for a snack. I would chalk this up to my short comings and lack of experience in controlling these majestic beasts.

So I thought this would be a good story to tell to a group of approximately 50 people at Business Intelligence seminar. In the middle of a 3 hour lecture I showed a picture of an extremely obese horse (I am assuming that it was Photo Shopped). I chose this picture because to my surprise all the pictures of one-eyed horses that were available probably weren’t appropriate to show around lunch time. It served its purpose, people’s eyes shot open like they were just hooked up to an IV of black coffee! I paused for effect as people drank in the picture and then looked at me to see what exactly was going on. So with a good amount of people staring at me with curiosity and a few colleagues in the back row laughing (they didn’t think I would actually do it) I realized that there was no turning back. I felt like I was in a rollercoaster as it reached the “point of no return”. Needless to say, they heard the analogy and it was successful.

So, what was the analogy? I related the experience of driving up to the ranch to the selection of a BI tool. Sometimes companies get excited and select a tool based on how it looks and the potential of what it may be able to accomplish, much like the race horse. Some companies realize that maybe they aren’t qualified and they want something safe, much like the one-eyed horse, so they stick with their Excel spreadsheets. What it comes down to is having someone with expertise and knowledge of the BI tools to help make the selection. Luckily, in the world of BI you would have been able to research each option. To relate this, I would have been able to know about each horse and what they were capable of relative to the others. Things you should always consider are budget, resources, talent, current environment, and future needs. I didn’t need a race horse to go through the desert when all I needed was a horse that could walk a few miles. I didn’t need a million dollar horse to take me on a two hour trail that was $40 with a Groupon. I needed a horse that could walk a few miles and follow the other horses because I definitely didn’t have the ability to communicate where it needed to go.

The moral of the story is that you should make your Business Intelligence decisions with the same common sense that you would make other decisions with. Research your options, determine your needs from wants, identify your priorities, and make a well-informed decision based off of information you have gathered. I would also suggest comparing the different options apples-to-apples, choose a vendor that you are confident in, and work with a company that you feel you can trust.

Pop Quiz

By
Ethan
Published: February 1, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Ethan Blogs on BI, HighlightsTags:
Pop Quiz

Quick! Answer this question: Can you do the work of an accountant?

Now, before I tell you why I ask and why you answered the way you did, humor me and ask yourself a few more questions: What made you think that you could or couldn’t handle that effort? Do you have any facts to back that opinion up? And, how certain are you of your opinion?

Another great question to ask is this: If I presented information to you that showed your opinion to be incorrect, would you question my data or would you question your conclusion?

As it turns out, in my oh so scientific survey, most people see accounting as a necessary evil which is fairly simple at its core and can be done by anyone who just sits down long enough. Now, why would we think that about accounting, but not say, programming? Well, it boils down to the depth of your understanding of accounting!

There is an interesting cognitive bias in play here, it is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which basically states that the less you know about something, the more you think you know about it and the stronger your feelings about that item’s unimportance. There is also a correlating theory that outlines the four stages of competence and looks like this:

1. Unconscious incompetence – I don’t know it but think I do, and so, it can’t be hard and therefore it isn’t all that important anyway.

2. Conscious incompetence – I don’t know it but I also realize that it is bigger than I am.

3. Conscious competence – I know it, but it takes work to get it done.

4. Unconscious competence – I know it and I don’t have to think about it.

I put these things out here because I have an interest and a concern about how they play a part in the application of business intelligence.

We use BI to help people make better decisions and that almost always requires overcoming their biases and preconceived notions, and their decision making models. Biases are difficult to overcome especially when someone is at a level “1” (unconscious incompetence) and they are making decisions thinking that they have everything that they need.

In my accounting example, if I don’t know anything about accounting, then it is easy to say, “just enter the invoices into the computer, pay the bills and stop pretending that it is so hard. You don’t need more resources or a new system because the old one worked and not much has changed anyway.” The reason is because in my mental model, unencumbered by any understanding of the complexities and vagaries surrounding it, accounting is just an administrative event that anyone can do. For those of us in the technology field, we can close our eyes and hear many managers say things like, “just put it on my iPad, how hard can it be?”

My concern is that while we fight biases all the time, this one is particularly difficult because the successful use of Business Intelligence requires an active consumer of the data in order to be relevant. So to fight recency bias (the bias for more recent data over older data) for instance, we give larger time frames of information so that the consumer can see the trend and gain perspective by noticing that historical data is relevant as well. The bias is addressed because the consumer can’t avoid looking at the whole chart.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is more insidious because people aren’t looking for the data and what they see they discount as either irrelevant, or even incorrect. I’m looking for suggestions here, but here is my basic thought process.

In order to get this bias addressed, we must first create an environment or tool where the decision maker will seek out the data. This can be done in a number of ways but I’m partial to gamification of the data. The basic description of this process is that we have to turn the data access and analysis into a game of sorts. Basically make the use of the tools “fun”. Now this is pretty hard to do with old green bar reports if you read my last article, but today with dashboards and really awesome looking mobile applications you can take a step towards making visualizing and accessing the data fun… not quite golf, but better than a root canal.

A scoring mechanism is difficult of course (all games need a scoreboard after all), but you can add that be providing collaboration opportunities where executives can share their insights and the data that they have found to be of value with others. This gives them a way to show that not only are they engaged, but can also alert others that may need to address (or act upon) what has been discovered.

The second piece of the cognitive bias is to fight the urge to ignore things that we don’t understand or that don’t fit in our mental model. Basically we are trying to get the decision makers into the 2nd stage of competence. To do this we need to make the data simple and easily applied and compared to other things which we already know and believe in. This is obviously way easier to say than to do, but the process is straight forward: start by making your data as simple as possible and then simplify it.

An example might be, if you are trying to show the MPG (miles per gallon) impact of maintenance on your vehicles and your VP of operations isn’t a big maintenance fan, break down the numbers into just preventative maintenance and MPG. This way, the data can be consumed in a way that will drive appreciation of the relationships that you’ve found. Don’t put a chart out there with 100 different types of maintenance as that will drive away the consumer. We like to make really complex dashboards because that’s what we do for a living; just don’t let the desire to make something really cool override the desire to make someone do something really cool.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas relating to this.  leave me a comment below.

Looking Too Far Ahead Can Lead to Painful Result

By
Paul
Published: January 23, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Paul Blogs on BI, SAP Business ObjectsTags:
Looking Too Far Ahead Can Lead to Painful Result

I have always found that a great way to prepare for a day of listening to sales presentations is to go for a run. So here I am in Las Vegas at SAP’s Sales Kickoff event and I start my first day, just as the sun rises, running through the jungle of casino resorts. About half way through my run, on a quiet side street with no traffic, I smash right into a fire hydrant!

OK. It was painted red instead of the usual yellow but it was not exactly small. It was a nasty collision and I took a layer of skin off my right quad and a bruise the size and shape of a baseball emerged. I hobbled back to my hotel and asked for a first aid kit. I was directed to security where the officer on duty quizzed me about my age pointing out that he was 75 years-old and had never collided with a fire hydrant in his entire life!

The truth was that I was not in my body at the time. I was looking and thinking ahead and, in doing so, did not see the hydrant.

My leg throbbed throughout the opening keynote presentations at the SAP Sales kickoff but I still found the content interesting. A collection of SAP executives painted the picture ahead for the coming year. They started with HANA as usual and then Cloud and then Mobile. They spoke about these three combined technologies as the growth path forward for both SAP’s business applications and their customers.

What was so interesting to me was what they did not talk about. There was almost no mention of Analytics or database technologies and not a single speaker mentioned the word BusinessObjects. While these missing items contributed a big part of SAP’s business in 2012, they appear to be less significant for the company’s future growth direction.

While new innovative technologies are driving and changing the way we operate and interact, new software solutions still take a while to become stable and effective in most businesses. At the same time it is important to both promote and sell innovation. The trick is to find the right balance by emphasizing the solutions that you have already sold to your customers at the same time as their future evolution.

Another key point brought out by several of the keynote speakers is that SAP will focus on selling solutions rather than products. Great idea! This will require retraining much of the sales force but it is a good investment in their future.

red-fire-hydrant-blogThe SAP Analytics direction revolves around HANA and new tools like Predictive Analytics and Visual Intelligence but these solutions may take a while to both prove themselves and become established.

It is wise not to look too far ahead at the cost of missing what is already in place and solid like your existing analytics customers or even a fire hydrant!

Becoming an “Iron Chef” Dashboard Creator

By
Paul
Published: January 22, 2013Posted in: Blog Featured, Business Intelligence, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , , ,
Becoming an “Iron Chef” Dashboard Creator

When I was 19 years-old, I decided I wanted to learn car mechanics. I could have gone to a training college but I wanted to “learn by doing” and from a real professional so I walked into a car service company that specialized in Rolls Royce’s and Bentley’s. I figured these were some of the most advanced and exclusive vehicles around so I would learn a lot.

The owner took one look at me and said he was not hiring anyone. I told him I would work for free because I just wanted to learn and I did not mind doing all the grunt work. He was impressed by my offer and told me he would take me on a trial basis and to start the next day.

I was teamed up with their top mechanic who had been there for 6 years but told me that he also knew nothing when he started. For the first three days, he showed me everything involved in the mechanical service of a Rolls Royce. He explained what he was doing as he was doing it. Then it was my turn. I made plenty of mistakes but that helped me to learn

Within a week I was doing oil change and check-up services on my own, within 2 weeks I was replacing brakes and after a month I was doing major services and clutch replacements.

It was hard work but watching my mentor in action, not only did I learn how to service and repair these magnificent vehicles but I learned all the pitfalls to watch out for, all the shortcuts and the best practices.

I passed my trial period with flying colors but I had to leave after two months to go to university. The contrast could not have been starker as I moved to a world of attending lectures, learning from books and participating in philosophical discussions. I can honestly say that I learned more in my two months as a car mechanic apprentice than I did in my entire first year of university.

While some people can learn through the more traditional academic methods, I have always found it to be more effective using the learning by doing approach.

When we look at designing and developing Xcelsius Dashboards, it is easy to learn the basics from a traditional course but if you want to design and develop true Business Intelligence dashboard applications, you will learn a lot more effectively by working alongside an expert.

Dragging and dropping components onto a canvass, defining their properties, connecting the components to data sources can look simple but when you want to add dynamic visibility, include over a hundred metrics, access millions of rows of data, include complex “What If” scenarios and write back to the database while creating the most awesome looking visual interface, it becomes more challenging.

However, experienced dashboard designers and developers who have learned by repeatedly doing can help both new people and those who have learned through traditional training to take their skills to a whole new level in a very short period of time.

It is for this reason that a combination of Xcelsius dashboard boot camps and hands-on knowledge transfer has proven to be the best and fastest path to becoming a top notch dashboard creator.

Boot camps are hands-on immersion training delivered by an experienced Xcelsius Dashboard expert and quite different to regular training – see blog http://limitlessbi.com/why-are-ibis-boot-camps-different-to-regular-training

InfoSol has been offering both beginner and master Xcelsius Dashboard boot camps for several years and as the experience of the InfoSol dashboard experts has evolved so have the boot camps. After the boot camp, the best way to fully absorb everything you learned is to work on a dashboard project side-by-side with an Xcelsius Dashboard expert who will both mentor you and help to create a first class dashboard application that you can use as a template for others going forward.

iron-chef---cooking-up-dashboardsThis year a brand new boot camp has been developed that focuses more on developers who have been creating Xcelsius dashboards for a while. The boot camp is entitled, Dashboard Design Iron Chef Bootcamp – Using SAP Dashboards 4.X. As the name suggests, it was conceived and created around the idea of how to help dashboard developers become “Iron Chefs” of their craft by designing dashboards that both stand out and attract user adoption.

Dashboards remain the most popular and effective way to deliver Business Intelligence solutions and will remain so for a while to come. Dashboard “Iron Chefs” creators are in demand and there is no better time than to seize the opportunity and become one.

Limitless BI – Up, Up and Away

By
Paul
Published: January 11, 2013Posted in: Blog Featured, Business Intelligence, Events, Highlights, IBISTags: , , , , , ,
Limitless BI – Up, Up and Away

Growing up, I used to watch the animated version of Superman on TV in black-and-white and I can still remember that introduction of :

“Faster than a speeding bullet.

More powerful than a locomotive.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Superman!”

I always felt that this narrative greatly understated what Superman could do. Of course he was faster than a speeding bullet since he could fly into outer space in just seconds; he was more powerful than a dozen locomotives and, since he could fly, bounding over a tall building was nothing! The fact was that Superman had amazing super powers and could do almost anything we could imagine. Since our imaginations have no boundaries, the capabilities of Superman seemed limitless.

Yet Superman had a day job as mild-mannered Clark Kent, the shy, fumbling and often inept newspaper reporter. Clark was portrayed as a real nerd and it was that characterization which gave hope to all of us other inconspicuous geeks. Maybe, we had hidden super powers too!

Business Intelligence today is taking on super power status as it provides the capability to analyze data and predicts trends that can transform organizations and actually change  the world. The possibilities are only limited by our imagination – this is Limitless BITM.

Many of the people creating BI solutions are a lot closer to resembling a Clark Kent than a Superman but, often, those super powers are just waiting to be unleashed.

The theme of this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS 2013) is Limitless Business IntelligenceTM and one of its objectives is to provide a collaborative environment where the “Clark Kents” of BI can gather and hone their super powers to conceive and share incredible BI solutions.

The hands-on advanced immersion boot camps and executive seminars at IBIS are designed to inspire you to see a world of infinite possibilities and Limitless Business IntelligenceTM solutions.

It’s time to bring out the super hero in you. It’s time to “up, up and away!”

 Update: Jan 27, 2013

At IBIS 2013, along with LimitlessBI, InfoSol is hosing the First Annual InfoBurst Conference.  The three-day event, focused on all things InfoBurst, is a unique opportunity to learn new InfoBurst skills, exchange knowledge and ideas with peers and experts and influence the future direction of the solution.  find out more…

BI’s New Year’s Resolution : Less Hype, More Results

By
Paul
Published: January 2, 2013Posted in: Business Intelligence, Highlights, Paul Blogs on BITags:
BI’s New Year’s Resolution : Less Hype, More Results

I used to make New Year’s resolutions but I usually forgot them within a week and never thought about them again until the next New Year. However, it is interesting to hear other people’s resolutions. My eldest daughter told me today that her 2013 resolution is to be less obsessive which she explained meant only re-reading her emails four times instead of twelve!

Now if Business Intelligence as a collective group could make a New Year’s resolution for 2013, I would suggest it would be something along the lines of “Less Hype, More Results”. We experienced a deluge of hype from the BI vendors and analysts in 2012 that will last us comfortably through the next decade. From big data, to BI in the Cloud to Mobile BI to next generation predictive analytics, it appeared as though there was a new BI product or technology being announced every week. The sad thing was that, for the most part, it was the same technology or product being packaged and announced in a different way. Part of the reason for this is that the technologies and products themselves were actually still being developed and evolving as the announcements were being made (a bit like building the plane as it is landing).

A good rule of thumb in the BI world today, is not to even consider adopting a new technology or product until at least three years after it has been announced. Unfortunately that will not stop the larger BI vendors from spending millions on marketing and sales hype to get you to buy it before it is ready for prime time.

What businesses and organizations want today out of BI is results. Most have already made substantial investments in BI tools and technologies and the last thing they need is to change these to something new when they have not realized the benefit of what they have already purchased. It is not the BI software that produces the results, it is the solution of which the BI software is a small part.

I recently came across a company that changed its entire BI product suite due to a lack of results. They then spent the next 3 years with the new BI suite creating new BI solutions in addition to converting the old ones. Months before they were about to roll out the new BI solutions, they changed BI product suites again, shelved all the new solutions about to go live and started developing yet another set of BI solutions. I know the hype from the BI vendors and analysts was a factor.

If most organizations decided to focus on results in 2013 for their BI solutions, the hype would diminish but I am still hopeful that the BI vendors themselves will resolve to do this on their own. Now that sounds more like a New Year’s wish but if we all start wishing for the same thing, it may just happen.

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