IBIS Archive

BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

By
Paul
Published: April 9, 2012Posted in: Blog Featured, IBIS, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , , ,
BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

There have been two majorly inspiring and revolutionary solutions in the world of Business Intelligence in the last decade and one person, Santiago Becerra, has been behind both of them.

The first was Xcelsius, the data visualization dashboard tool that rocketed first Business Objects and then SAP to the forefront of business intelligence dashboard solutions. Santiago once told me that the idea for Xcelsius came about after a casual conversation with one of his sons, who was a computer game developer, about making business applications more visual and interactive like computer games. Santiago had created “Gamification” before it had even become a word (according to Wikipedia it was first used in March 2004 several years after Xcelsius was created). Xcelsius was not only ahead of its time, it was a game changer for Business Objects after they acquired the company from Santiago in late 2005 as within two years it was their hottest selling product and was taking over as the user interface of choice for business intelligence.

Roambi Cardex on iPad

After seeing Xcelsius successfully settled into Business Objects, Santiago moved into semi-retirement but his visionary mind could not stop conjuring up new ideas. After seeing a line of people queuing up for an iPhone, he bought one for himself and became intrigued by its visual display capabilities. This led to inspired, revolutionary BI solution number 2. Gathering together some of the original team that had made Xcelsius successful and some very talented developers, he created the most spectacular BI visualization solution ever seen on a mobile device – Roambi. Today, Roambi is the leading BI visualization solution for mobile devices with a plethora of awards and an ever increasing global presence, Some of the Roambi views like Cardex and Squares have got to be seen to be believed (especially on the iPad) – these are designs of pure genius. You can download demo versions for free off the iTunes store.

Roambi Squares on iPad

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when Santiago Becerra agreed to deliver the keynote address at this year’s IBIS 2012 event. With the theme of the conference being Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0, it is a perfect match-up. Few people have contributed more than Santiago to inspiring the world of Business Intelligence.

Equally as exciting, is a new executive seminar track at this year’s IBIS also entitled Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0 that will consist of 12 customer presented case studies on some pretty cool and inspired BI solutions. The final list of customer presentations will be announced in a couple of weeks so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I suggest you reserve a place at IBIS 2012 very soon as the event is limited to just 250 attendees and seats are filling up fast.

Register now.

Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

By
Paul
Published: March 1, 2012Posted in: Blog Featured, IBISTags: , , , , ,
Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

Last week I was visiting a customer in the transportation business. They were showing me a new safety business intelligence dashboard they were working on to analyze accidents and crashes. The first phase of the project focused on all accidents and crashes over a three year period. With more than 16,000 commercial vehicles on the road every day, this is a lot of data to analyze. However, what really struck me was the incredible number of ways they were able to slice, dice and analyze this data in the dashboard looking visually at data by region, depot, type of vehicle at the same time as looking at personnel and all the different categories of accidents and to compare all this at different time periods.

I was floored by the incredible amount of detailed information available at the click of a button and had to ask the question as to how much data was actually available to the dashboard. The customer explained that they had reduced the amount of data from about 500,000 rows to about 300,000 rows by organizing it as a cube in their Teradata Data warehouse and were loading it daily into the XML Data Cache (XDC) and using their XDC connectors in the Xcelsius dashboard solution.

They then showed me phase 2 of the project where they had placed a series of bubble charts on top of a geographical map to show location and type of accidents. They had built in the ability to zoom in on different regions of the country which was really cool.

But what really blew my mind were their plans for phase 3 where they are looking to collect geographic location information from the vehicles which are all equipped with satellite navigation systems that would transmit the location of the accident. The Business Intelligence dashboard would then display where most accidents and accidents of the same type were happening down to the exact street location so they could look for patterns and trends.

This is a truly inspired business intelligence solution and one of many that I am seeing these days. It is for this reason that at this year’s IBIS 2012 event in Dana Point, CA in June, there will be a 3-day Executive Track dedicated to “Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions”.

The track will consist of 12 inspired BI solutions presented by the customers themselves that created them. We have already encouraged several customers to present their solutions but we are still looking for a few more.

Inspired people with inspired ideas create inspired BI solutions so if you would like to submit your solution for this year’s IBIS and receive a $500 discount if selected then Just email ibis@infosol.com  a description of your inspired solution focusing on the following points :

- Why did you create it?

- How did you create it?

- What were the benefits?

Please include any additional diagrams, screenshots, documents, quotes , photos or anything else that will help to further explain your inspired solution. Also provide your contact information and the best times to call you to discuss your entry.

Of course, if you would just like to come along and listen to 12 highly informative inspired business intelligence customer case studies and save $400 then be sure to Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early bird discount.

 

IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

By
admin
Published: February 6, 2012Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags: , , , ,
IBIS 2012 Announced: Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

IBIS is well known for offering the most effective BusinessObjects learning available along with intelligent and inspirational ideas on how to maximize your Business Intelligence usage and investment.

IBIS 2012: INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0, June 10 – 13, 2012, has just been announced and offers an amazing selection of Hands-on Pre-Seminar Workshops, Immersion Training Boot Camps and Executive Seminars on the most popular and latest BusinessObjects solutions delivered by top BI specialists.

The seminar includes 3 full days of learning and peer experiences, and is packaged together to include 3 nights’ accommodations at the luxurious Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, CA. Along with group meals, resort fees and scheduled events, IBIS 2012 is an incredible value and the most important BusinessObjects event to attend this year.

We invite you to join us for INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 2.0. Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early-bird $400 discount.

June 10 Pre-Seminar Workshops

• Advanced Report Bursting, Scheduling & Delivery Using InfoBurst (Hands On)

• Migration to BI 4.x (Hands On)

• Conversion of Desktop Intelligence to Web Intelligence (Hands On)

• Building Xcelsius Dashboards for Mobile (Hands On)

• InfoBurst Administration Certification (Hands On)

• How to Develop KPI’s

June 11 – 13 IBIS Main Conference

Hands-On Boot Camps

• Xcelsius Beginner Boot Camp

• Xcelsius Master Boot Camp

• XML Data Caching Boot Camp

• BI 4.0 Developer Boot Camp

• Web Intelligence Boot Camp

• BusinessObjects Administration Boot Camp

Executive Seminar Tracks

• Business Intelligence for Executives

• The Tao of Business Intelligence

• Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0

 For more details, view the IBIS 2012 Agenda.

Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

By
Paul
Published: June 27, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, XcelsiusTags: , ,
Best Xcelsius Dashboard Award Winners Receive Accolades at IBIS 2011

The winners of the highly coveted InfoSol Best Xcelsius Dashboard awards were announced on Monday at IBIS 2011.  After each of the dashboards in the four categories was explained and demonstrated, representatives for the companies received the etched glass pyramid accolade that has become synonymous with the awards.

This year’s “Best Business Dashboard” award went to Rural Metro Corporation for their Daily Business Insight dashboard which was developed to show daily insight into operational, billing and financial data from different systems delivered in a simple and effective way. The interface was designed in a format that made sense to management and provided the ability to coordinate the distribution of matching Web Intelligence reports to their mobile devices. One of the key benefits of the dashboard was that it helped to create a consistent means of communication across the business.

The “Most Innovative Dashboard” award was won by McKesson Specialty Care Solutions for a dashboard they developed to provide a single view of all program enrollment and fill activity for a key client to quickly access the data they need in order to respond to internal data requests, in a timely, efficient and accurate manner. The dashboard made great use of different Xcelsius components including color coded maps, selection tables and a variety of different charts while using tabs and selection buttons to make the navigation both simple and powerful. The dashboard resulted in timely and accurate turnaround to requests that benefitted both McKesson and their client.

The “Most Valuable Dashboard” award was claimed by Banner Health for their automated dashboard used to analyze and monitor patient throughput within designated Emergency Departments within the Banner Health system. The dashboard is able to access a large number of key operational and clinical metrics providing standardization and trust in the data throughout the organization. One of the key benefits was an improvement in overall patient satisfaction by reducing the wait time between a patient’s initial arrival time and examination by a physician.

The fourth award this year was renamed the “Most Inspired Dashboard” award and was won by Sohar Aluminum from Oman for their dashboard to bring about accountability, transparency in daily work and ultimately consistent, accurate data. The dashboard was inspirational in both its design and functionality by making use of write back functionality enabling supervisors to enter their actual and target results through the dashboard itself. In addition, other alert dashboards were created that are automatically scheduled and emailed to supervisors who are late entering their data. The dashboard has been so successful that it has actually brought about a culture change in the way people look at data and processes at the company.

After the awards, many companies present vowed to enter even more amazing dashboards for the 2012 awards and I can’t wait to see them.

Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

By
Paul
Published: June 20, 2011Posted in: Blog Featured, IBIS, InfoSol, News, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags:
Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

IBIS 2011 kicked off last night with its welcome reception and solutions showcase demonstrating some of the latest business intelligence solutions and one solution in particular created quite a buzz – MyBI Mobile.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

Keynotes at IBIS 2011 Look Set to Inspire All

By
Paul
Published: June 17, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags:
Keynotes at IBIS 2011 Look Set to Inspire All

As the excitement mounts for IBIS 2011 which kicks off this weekend, there is a buzz emerging around the keynotes to be delivered on Monday and Tuesday mornings.

Paul Grill, CEO and President of InfoSol, will kick off IBIS 2011 under the banner of this year’s theme of Inspired Business Intelligence with a fascinating glimpse at some inspirational BI technologies, along with some truly creative and inspired BI solutions encountered in the last year. This will include showing fully functional Xcelsius dashboards with no modifications running on an iPad and other mobile devices. Not only is this cool but it takes Xcelsius and mobile business intelligence to a whole new level of capabilities and possibilities.

Paul will also be announcing the winners of the coveted 2011 Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards. There are four categories this year, namely :

  • Best Business Dashboard
  • Most Innovative Dashboard
  • Most Valuable Dashboard
  • Most Inspired Dashboard

The winning dashboards will be demonstrated during the awards.

On Tuesday morning, Yolande Grill, Vice President of Business Development at InfoSol will deliver a compelling and thought provoking keynote entitled “Conversations with Einstein on Business Intelligence”. The synopsis speaks for itself :

“I recently ran across this quote by Einstein stating that “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count” and that “everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” It echoed for me a sentiment that I had been pondering in the last couple of years about what it is that we measure in Corporate America. I am deeply interested and passionate about the experience of the “individual at work.”

Using the tools of Business Intelligence, we engage in a process that attempts to answer for us the questions that lead us to the efficient and profitable growth of our business. The data we gather informs us, we then choose what other data to gather, and we enter a cycle of gathering and reporting. We use the results internally to inform our day to day operation and decision making, and we share the results externally to engage and court our customers into remaining in relationship with us.

Our results are only as good as our questions, and in my search for finding the questions, I stumbled into a conversation with Albert Einstein.”

Ryan Goodman, Founder and CEO of Centigon Solutions and well known Xcelsius Guru and Evangelist, wraps up the keynotes with a presentation and demonstration on a couple of amazing Xcelsius dashboard solution case studies showing real world business problems that “inspired” swift action that not only affected the bottom line but also impacted lives.

IBIS 2011 is definitely the place to be next week. Really looking forward to being with everyone.

Happy

By
Yolande
Published: June 16, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBISTags:
Happy

As part of our IBIS 2011 (InfoSol’s Business Intelligence Seminar), we are hosting a screening of the movie Happy from Academy Award® Nominated director Roko Belic.  Below is the trailer.

As part of our commitment to our Bii (Business Intelligence Institute) training program, in May after their exams, we welcomed three interns from the Computer Information Systems program at ASU (Arizona State University).  To help them think out of the box we gave two of them a problem for which they had minimal assistance.  We asked them to come up with a dashboard (applying BI technology) that attempted to measure a non-traditional metric of (Happiness).   Why? #1 reason is because it is fun!  And also, because the best way to learn is by doing.

WARNING:  please note that any data you enter in the dashboard that was created is not encrypted and no authentication is used in this current version – so just use a nickname – remember it so you can visit again – and have fun!

It is really inspiring for me to see what Dan Hicks and Joe Pearson were able to accomplish.  Here’s what they said:

“We set out on our mission to measure happiness unsure of what we would discover. Having never created a dashboard before now, we experienced many successes and struggles along the way. Ultimately, we learned a lot through the entire process of coming up with an idea, building the dashboard, and constant testing. It is important to realize that this dashboard and the way happiness is defined is a work in progress.  Happiness can mean many different things to many different people.  The intangibility of this emotion can lead to a lack of recognition.  The goal of our project is to inspire the discussion about often overlooked aspects in the workplace and in life.

“After using the Happy Dashboard, we urge you to further explore the subject.  Here are some links to get started, including a link to the Happy Movie which was our main inspiration.”

The Happy Movie- http://thehappymovie.com/

Oxford Happiness Survey- http://happiness-survey.com/survey/ 

Zenhabits 52 tips for Happiness- http://zenhabits.net/handbook-for-life-52-tips-for-happiness-and-productivity/

Living your life for happiness- http://www.bakadesuyo.com/how-should-you-spend-your-time-in-order-to-in

In no way am I or we (InfoSol) claiming to be experts or even know much about the science of happiness.  I believe that this project is something fun to work on and like Joe and Dan said, a great way to get the conversation started. 

I will update this post with more links and I hope that you will post comments with suggestions to links that you may feel contribute to further discussion on this topic.

They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

By
Paul
Published: June 12, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, InfoSolTags: , , ,
They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

With only 7 days to go until the start of our annual IBIS I wanted to blog about some of our partners that will be joining us this year.  They say that you are known by the company you keep and it is with great excitement that I get to welcome the following partners to our Inspired Business Intelligence seminar.

Centigon Solutions – Ryan Goodman and Evan DeLodder (California, USA)

Centigon provides add-on components for Xcelsius dashboards like GMaps for incorporation of Google Maps in your dashboards and a group of neat components know as the Essentials Bundle. InfoSol resells these offerings and includes the Essentials Bundle in our InfoBurst Dash solution. Centigon is an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating their solutions at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.  Ryan Goodman, Centigon Founder and Xcelsius evangelist will be delivering one of the keynote addresses on Inspired Dashboard Solutions on Tuesday morning. He will also be leading two sessions in the “Next Generation of BI” track (Track 7). Evan Delodder the CTO and product architect at Centigon will be delivering the 2-day FleXcelsius boot camp in the IBIS Post-seminar offerings on the Thursday and Friday after IBIS. This boot camp will teach you how to build your own Xcelsius components in Flex.

Keyrus – Klaus Binder and Aurelien Vadi (France)

Keyrus, a large Consulting company based in France has also developed some add-on solutions for BusinessObjects, like Version Manager for version control of universes and reports. We partner together, with Keyrus reselling InfoBurst in Europe, and InfoSol reselling Version Manager in the US.  They are an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating Version Manager at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.

Blueprint Management – David Searro and Mike Saunders (U.K.)

Blueprint  a specialist consultancy that creates business intelligence and data warehouse platforms for improved performance management and financial planning is also one of our partners and an InfoBurst Reseller in the UK.  David Searro is from the senior management team at Blueprint and Mike Saunders is a technical specialist.

Affecto – Jesper Schultz-Pedersen (Denmark)

Affecto is a BI Solutions Company in Denmark covering Scandinavia and the Baltic States.  Jesper is a technical specialist. 

CTTSI – Michael Ward (Michigan, USA)

CTTSI (Creative Technologies and Training Solutions Inc.) is based in Michigan. They offer training and consulting in BusinessObjects and have been a long time partner with InfoSol.   Michael is the President and Owner of the company.

You can find links to other InfoSol partners on our website.

image credit: presentermedia.com

IBIS and the Runaway Brides!

By
Paul
Published: May 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, IBIS, Paul Blogs on BITags:
IBIS and the Runaway Brides!

Last weekend I went to see my favorite Roller Derby team – the “Runaway Brides” – and they were just awesome out playing the “Schoolyard Scrappers” to a well deserved and convincing win.  Ellie Mayhem the leading jammer for the “Brides” was just pure poetry in motion as she glided past one bemused blocker after another.

But even more awesome was the fact that I did not just get to watch a game, I actually got to watch two full games that evening plus meet the players and have great exchanges with other Roller Derby fans. It was 4 hours of entertainment and social interaction for an amazing price .

Sure they may have been only 500 people there but that was also part of the appeal – I felt important and appreciated.

It is events like these that are not just great value for money but also bring you great overall satisfaction.  And this is exactly what the InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS) is all about – great value and great satisfaction.

IBIS delivers 3 full days of immersion hands-on boot camp training in the most popular BusinessObjects solutions along with the opportunity to meet top Business Intelligence developers and specialists and have great knowledge transfer exchanges with your peers.  There is also the opportunity to see the latest and future BI products in action and hear about inspired customer solutions recently implemented.

The immersion boot camps which include Xcelsius Beginner, Xcelsius Master, Web Intelligence Master, Crystal Reports 2008 Master and Xcelsius Data caching with InfoBurst are particularly unique.  Hands-on education for these topics at this level is difficult to find.

The best part of all is that the IBIS package includes 3 nights of luxury accommodations at the breathtaking Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, all group meals, resort fees, taxes, and free internet.

Last week, I met a BI Director of a major global corporation at the SAP Sapphire conference who commented that while Sapphire was a huge event attended by thousands, it did not compare to IBIS in terms of its first class venues and overall value.

I could not agree more.

Photo Credit: Snip taken from http://www.arizonaderbydames.com/site/press/ all rights reserved.

IBIS 2011 – Can you smell the ocean air?

By
Yolande
Published: May 24, 2011Posted in: IBISTags:
IBIS 2011 – Can you smell the ocean air?

I’ve bookmarked the Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel website and have been visiting it more frequently now that IBIS 2011 is less than a month away.  26 days away to be exact and I’m very excited because I missed last year’s IBIS at this fantastic resort.  The first line of their home page reads: Escape to one of the world’s finest luxury resorts…

And their pictures speak for themselves. 

But location aside, IBIS 2011 promises to be our best IBIS yet.  With a theme of Inspired Business Intelligence, our hope is to share with you our passion for BI and to provide you the opportunity to connect and be present with each other so that you may collectively inspire and be inspired among a circle of peers.    

Here are some highlights with links to the IBIS website:

IBIS 2011: INSPIRED BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, June 19 – 24, 2011, offers a robust line-up:

 

IBIS registration includes 3 nights stay at the Ritz overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, all group meals, resort fees and more.

Register online.  I can’t wait to see you there.

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