|
The
best-in-class may not be the best-for-YOU
In
the IT industry there is always a lot of tail-wagging
when it comes to lists of best-in-class products.
But
now there are some funny things going on in the
BI/DW product marketplace. And, sometimes best-in-class
may not be best-for-YOU.
What
can you do? Here are seven suggestions to get
you headed in the right direction.
Find
out what the seven suggstions are in The
best-in-class may not be the best-for-you
at the Data Doghouse.
Excel's
Stronghold Part I
If
you don't think Excel has a stronghold on business
users, check out this article on the new survey
from the Oracle Application Users Group.
The
survey states that 3 out of 4 enterprises rely
on (my emphasis) spreadsheets for reporting
and business intelligence! A corollary finding
was that only one of ten employees in a corporation
had access to BI capabilities (outside of Microsoft
Excel, of course.)
Read
more on Oracle
User Group Survey: Achieving End-to-End Business
Intelligence at the Data Doghouse.
Excel's
Stronghold Part II
Is there a happy medium between business users
who want to see their data in Excel and data warehouse
managers who want the enterprise using "real"
BI tools?
Hannah
Smalltree interviewed me for the article she wrote
on this dilemma for SearchDataManagement.com:
Diplomatically
dealing with Excel in the enterprise. As she
writes, "Business and finance users like
Excel's familiar features and say IT hasn't yet
been able to give them a better tool. On the flip
side, IT users lament Excel's ability to exacerbate
data integrity problems and wonder why business
users insist on using spreadsheets rather than
the business intelligence (BI) tools they're given."
Speaking
of Microsoft, data warehousing, and the enterprise,
see my previous article for SearchCRM: Microsoft
Excel - The King of BI
A
soccer coach’s musings on BI/DW
I was at a BI tool regional users group recently
where we were discussing people who were long
on BI but short on ETL experience. Afterwards
I got to thinking about the knowledge process
that most people and groups go through in reporting,
business intelligence (BI), ETL (extract, transform
and load) and data warehousing.
I
have coached both my sons’ soccer teams
over the last ten years and have noticed that
kids go through similar learning experiences and
growth.
Read
the rest of A
soccer coach’s musings on BI/DW (and
see a photo of the team) on the Data Doghouse.
Boston
Area Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing
Training Schedule
Are
your IT and business users getting the highest
ROI from your business intelligence and data warehousing
efforts? According to CIO Insights’ 2006
survey on business value, 89% of IT and business
executives say the business value of business
intelligence projects met or exceeded their expectations.
Yet 25% weren’t investing in it
yet. Isn't it about time to start?
You
can help your IT and business users get up to
speed with our cost-effective, comprehensive business
intelligence and data warehousing training.
(All
these courses are also available at
your site, and we'll even customize them for
you.)
|
Public Business Intelligence and Data
Warehousing Training Schedule |
|
|
I
hope you have enjoyed this issue and will let
me know what you think.
And if you have suggestions for future topics
for this newsletter or the Data
Doghouse blog, don't hesitate to share them.
Rick
Sherman, Athena IT Solutions
|
