Share What’s in your toolbox?   Attention programmers and IT professionals: we have a pipeline of contract positions waiting to be filled.  If you have minimal programming experience and/or a strong affinity for software applications, this could be your opportunity.  Crystal Report Pros is about to release a custom “fast track” training program designed to turn you into [...]

Share What’s wrong with Mikey?  He knows a stinky crystal report when he sees one.  Stinky reports come from stinky business intelligence practices.  So, continuing on our theme, here are some of the worst business intelligence practices: Assuming the average business user has the time, inclination, or expertise to use BI tools Using Microsoft Excel [...]

Share Is failure an option for you?  Of course not – nobody wants to fail.  Yet why do so many business intelligence initiatives fail? The lack of a clear, well developed and articulated BI strategy along with appropriate executive sponsorship are among the top reasons why BI initiatives do not achieve their potential or fail [...]

Share It’s no secret – the influence of social media channels is large, and growing.  Opportunities abound for companies willing to engage consumers via these channels.  Perhaps you’ve seen the Old Spice Guy videos on YouTube, in which he personally responded to Tweets from various celebrities and others?  Yeah, well Old Spice body wash sales [...]

Share Check out this SAP Business One success story by by SAP-TV.  Style West, a branding, distribution and marketing company for apparel and footwear brands, implemented SAP Business One to set themselves up for continued growth and success.  SAP Business One provides Style West with views into their inventory across multiple divisions, tracking all transactions [...]

Share Remember when Steve Jobs called out mobile analytics firm Flurry for collecting device data about Apple’s products?  Well, that mini soap opera opened a door for MixPanel.  Says a report from TechCrunch: MixPanel has been a popular analytics company for about a year now.  In fact, they recently announced they were tracking a billion [...]

Share Wayne Eckerson says the key to analytics is asking the right questions.  Any analyst can find the answer to any question.  The key is knowing what questions to ask.  The best questions (and the best analysts) test assumptions about what makes the business tick.  Often, the obvious metrics aren’t the ones that produce the [...]

Share So you’ve determined the key numbers and metrics you need to measure in your organization.  What’s next?  How do you make it work? The key to making it all work is to have a good, single point accountable person (SPA) whose job it is to really dig into the different areas.  You’ll want this person [...]

Share So says Mary Adams, author of the new book Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century in a post entitled How can we use IT to optimize our Intellectual Capital?  We all live and work in the knowledge era, and we all know knowledge is where competitive advantage lies.  But it is the [...]

Share Michael Fitzgerald over at Computerworld says business intelligence is going mobile.  So what’s new?  Haven’t some companies been delivering business intelligence via mobile for some time now?  Well, yes: But then the recession hit, and that stymied investment in mobile BI product development and marketing, Hatch says. What the recession didn’t stop was the development [...]