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For BI practitioners driving data-driven business value

Everyone Hates Reports—What People Want Is Answers

Early in my career, thanks to some great managers, I was fortunate to have landed in a position with the responsibility of regularly presenting the performance of the business to the CEO and her...
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Stop Wasting Money—Why Waiting for BI is

How much does waiting cost you? From a personal perspective, it might not be that hard to answer the question.  Add together time waiting in line, time waiting...
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BI Leaders—Make it Simple with Data Abstraction

Consider an online retailer who has questions like: When should we roll out specific marketing campaigns?  Which products should we push?  Which products...
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Three Steps to Spring Clean Your BI Platform

Stumbling through an information portal cluttered with content choices and complex navigation can be a confusing experience. It may seem like the answer you...
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Why Analytics Maturity Matters

The world of Analytics is no different than any other technology-based solution domain in that the receptiveness of the audience to change is one of the most...
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How to Revitalize Your BI with In-memory Analytics

As humans, we have very flexible thought processes.  We ask questions that lead to answers.  If we don’t like the answer, we ask a different question.  ...
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Why Best of Breed Technologies Don't Make the Best

Do you like smartphones?  Think they’re easy to use?  Would you rather carry around a digital camera for photographs, a phone for calls only, a pager for...
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How to Avoid Analytics Failure—A Tale of Two

Did you know that Gartner estimates that 50% of all Analytics projects fail?   Have you taken part in one or more of these projects...
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Schemas at Scale: How to Avoid Common Data

As a BI industry professional, one of the things that intrigues me is the fact that even today, with all the BI tools out there, analyses that cut across...
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5 Things I Wish I’d Known about Business

Do you ever wish you had a time machine? What would you go back and tell your younger self if you did? Thinking back over my career as a Business Analyst, BI...
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Is There Bias in BI? The Undoing Project by

Try a little thought experiment with me.     Take out a piece of paper.  Call to mind the last two digits of your cell phone number.  Write them down.  Now...
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Why Facebook Is More Popular Than BI—and What

Here’s a question for you: how often do you open Facebook just to go to someone’s profile and look up a piece of information about them? If you’re...
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The Secret to Self-Service BI Success

Last week at a Customer Advisory Board meeting, I saw a presenter who stood out as a sales training star. He worked at a world-class software provider on the...
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5 Ways to Deploy Analytics 5x Faster

With the pace of change in the world getting faster every day, companies that rely on gut instinct over data-driven decisions are doomed to get left behind. But...
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6 Ways to Bulletproof Your Data Model

So you’re ready to roll out your dimensional data model and looking for ways to put the finishing touches on it. These 6 best practices will help you take...
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Dimensional Data Modeling in 4 Simple Steps

This guide serves as the first of a series of blog posts designed to help you set up an analytics-ready data pipeline using some fundamental data modeling...
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Building a Killer BI Business Case: Start Small,

Business Intelligence (BI) is now solidly at the top of the list of most enterprise IT plans. Top-performing companies will spend 33% more of their tech budgets...
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3 Tips for Crushing Your Next Analytics Project

I spend a lot of my time these days traveling to talk to customers about how to get the most value out of their analytics ecosystem.  People are hungry for...
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5 Takeaways from This Year's Gartner Summit

We’re back in Palo Alto after another engaging week at Gartner BI & Analytics Summit in Grapevine, TX. Coming shortly after their release of this year’s...
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What the Bleep is a Chasm Trap

Chasm trap. Sounds like one of those metal claws hunters put in the jungle to capture leopards and panthers - not something you want to fall into around the...
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Top 3 Questions for Leaders in a BI Buying Cycle

Three must-ask questions every business manager should bring up during your next BI buying cycle...
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Busted: The Business Intelligence Industry's

Self-service is one of the hottest terms in business intelligence. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most misunderstood...
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