Joe McKendrick
Business Intelligence ‘Not Easily Outsourced’
There are many good reasons to get involved in building an analytics-driven business culture, but a new Forrester Research report cuts right to the chase as to why managers and professionals should be interested: it’s a career booster. (more…)
Applying The 80-20 Rule To Self-Service Business Intelligence
Business intelligence self service is a great thing, but did you know it could potentially lead to worse decision-making than before? A company may have the best intentions when it installs and announces some marvelous new analytical interfaces to help managers get at enterprise data. But if the tools are too intimidating, it may drive users right back to the more manual, gut-feel decision-making the tools were meant to help avoid. (more…)
Yesterday’s Data Professionals; Today’s Polymaths
Behind just about every new innovation is data. As a result, today’s and tomorrow’s innovators are data professionals that have extended their expertise to new fields.
In 2010, my colleague Vinnie Mirchandani published a book, The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations, which describes the convergence of various skill areas into new ventures.
“Polymath” is the Greek word for one who excels in many disciplines. Data managers and professionals are assuming roles far beyond managing rows and columns and worrying about server provisioning and security protocols. Today’s data managers and professionals are being called upon to be leaders, evangelists and guides – the driving force behind a range of new developments now emerging across just about every industry you can imagine. (more…)
Enlightened Analytics: Your Greatest Data Discoveries May Come When Least Expected
Did you ever hear about the bank that started digging into its data and discovered who its most profitable customers really were? (Not the large depositors – the most profitable segment was individuals with minimal deposits who were paying penalties and fees.)
Or how about the fruit juice company that discovered a spike in sales across New York and New England every April? (Retirees returning from Florida at that time, hooked on fresh orange juice.)
It’s amazing what kinds of insights you will find after working with analytics platforms and tools over time. While companies installing analytics and business intelligence solutions expect cutting-edge results to immediately present themselves to decision makers, the most important discoveries and innovations may come later, when least expected. (more…)
Information Security: Many Companies Are Missing The Big Picture
We often assume information security can be assured if we throw layers and layers of technology at potential vulnerabilities. That assumption is partially correct. However, even the most securely locked-down database in the world won’t shield data in an environment that lacks the awareness or political will to meet information security issues head-on. Two new industry surveys reveal how organizational and management issues create data security vulnerabilities. (more…)
Agile BI: Freedom From Data Models?
Can Agile Business Intelligence finally deliver analytics and insights to the people that need it? Or is it potentially a distraction?
The word “Agile” carries two interrelated meanings in the information technology space: the strict dictionary definition of agile is “moving quickly and lightly.” A more codified meaning is “Agile” as a type of best practice or methodology, in which technologists work hand-in-hand with business end-users in project teams. The spirit of Agile-based development is captured in the Agile Manifesto, written several years ago with the goal of “uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.” The goal is to avoid the syndrome of having technology teams build solutions in a vacuum, then throwing the solution result over the wall to leave users struggling with the final result.
So, Agile philosophy has been around for almost a decade, and it looks like BI is catching up to it, with increasing talk of Agile BI. (more…)
What is ‘Big Data’ and Why is it Such a ‘Big’ Deal?
Big Data, meet Big Analytics.
At a recent Teradata Partners industry conference in San Diego, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on the issues around the challenges and opportunities of “Big Data.” Panel members sought to dispel many of the misconceptions that exist around Big Data.
First, there was an attempt to clear the air about the meaning of “Big Data.” Donald Feinberg, analyst with Gartner, pointed out that ten years ago, a company with gigabytes of data would have been considered to be handling “Big Data.” Today, he said, “if you asked 200 people for a definition of ‘Big Data,’ you would get 200 definitions,” he says. “Everything is relative.” (more…)
Bad Data Is As Much A Business As It Is A Technical Challenge
“Data quality isn’t just about the data. It is also about people’s understanding of what it is, what it means, and how it should be used.” – Carol Newcomb and Caryn Maresic
“Bad” data often is addressed at the database level, through techniques and tools such as data profiling, cleansing and deduplication. These are all well and good, but often the reason data is “bad” is because it is misaligned with the business purpose it is supposed to serve. There usually is no process in place to vet the data not only for accuracy, but relevance to the business. Most often, decision-makers simply don’t know if the data they’re basing their decisions on is the right data. (more…)
Survey: ‘Data Democracy’ Is Still A Ways Off
Why are we working so hard to open up our corporate information stores and bring down silos? Because we want to enable and empower decision makers at all levels to access and share data. A well-informed organization these days is a highly competitive one.
Alas, as a new survey shows, this lofty goal of data democracy is still a lofty, but far-off one. Information used in analysis and decision making still remains confined to a handful of executives and analysts within organizations. Worse yet, everybody is still using spreadsheets to compensate for their lack of access to vital enterprise information. And if they do need to extract reporting data from a back-end enterprise system, they end up waiting in line at the door of IT for days or even weeks. (more…)
Three Steps for Creating Your Own Private Cloud Formation
There is plenty of attention on the public cloud phenomenon, and no shortage of discussion on whether enterprises will adopt outside cloud services to supplement or replace their own internal IT. But even more pervasive these days is the growth of “private clouds,” in which back-end IT applications and infrastructures are virtualized and abstracted to a common service layer that the entire organization can use.
Here at the Perspectives community, Darren Cunningham, vice president of Marketing for Informatica Cloud, recently posted a compelling piece exploring the implications of cloud and Software as a Service on IT departments, observing that contrary to rumors of IT being dismantled or shunned aside as cloud computing grows, we’ll see new avenues of growth. IT will truly evolve to consultants and partners to the business, because in the coming years, the business will rely even more on IT, not less.
Of course, there will understandably be some levels of angst as technology shifts to the cloud. The distress is obvious for businesses moving to third-party providers, but will also crop up for what will be far more common internal cloud migrations. (more…)
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