Case Study for Upcoming #BIWisdom TweetChat

Hello Folks!

At last week's #BIWisdom TweetChat, we decided to try a different format for this coming Friday. Instead of open chat, we're going to analyze a customer case study and suggest possible solutions.

Our inaugural case study has been contributed by one of our eminent "tribe" members, Jacqui Taylor, Founder and CEO at FlyingBinary.

Case Study: What would you do next?

Background: A large global brand with staff worldwide.
The existing BI infrastructure is one of the large vendor packages which has been in place for over 10 years with the expected Data Warehouse style deploy. Standard ETL and Reporting processes exist. They have approximately 3 Terabytes of data to consider.

Client: The Head of IT
We had been asked to supply a resource to ‘straighten out’ the business users. We were allocated a budget of 7 days to produce some self serve BI reports in order to establish the WIP (Work In Progress) stock position.

Assignment: How did we do?
After 5 days we had not been able to establish WIP stock position, discovered data integrity problems in the data warehouse, clients not invoiced, incomplete sales pipeline data, most of the business users were using Excel extracts to run their business units. Additionally, we were approached by an additional 15 business users whose reporting requirements have not been met by the existing BI infrastructure.

What would you do with the remaining 2 days of the assignment?

Jacqui Taylor
Founder, CEO
FlyingBinary Limited
@flyingbinary


Don't forget that this is the last week to participate in our upcoming Mobile Computing & Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study. Participants receive a complimentary copy of the findings.

Research Nugget from Our Impending Mobile Study

Hello Folks!

As we get ready to close data collection for our Mobile Computing & Mobile Business Intelligence Study, I thought I would share another research "nugget" with you.

In this analysis, I created a crosstab of major geography and expectations for numbers of exclusively Mobile BI users.


As you can see, North Americans appear to be the most aggressive in plans surrounding exclusive Mobile BI usage, followed by EMEA and APAC.

Of course, we're still collecting data for another 8 days - until September 30th! And, the larger the sample the more interesting the crosstab analyses will be.

So, we ask you to do your part and spend 10 minutes completing the survey. Not only will you be making an important contribution to this body of research, but we'll send you a complimentary findings report later this year!

Click here to be directed to the survey!

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Howard

Is Your Business Intelligence Vendor Listed? Vendor Participation in Upcoming Mobile Study

Hello Folks!

As with previous Mobile Business Intelligence Market studies, the current study, in addition to user input, will include information gathered directly from Business Intelligence vendors.

I feel that it is important to include this information to give readers a balanced view of BI vendor mobile capabilities and plans for the coming months/years.

My thanks to these vendors that have already provided this information:

• Actuate
• Arcplan
• Birst
• Connexica
• Dimensional Insight
  
• Extended Results (PushBI)
• GoodData
• IBM
• Information Builders
• Jaspersoft Corporation
• Jedox (Palo)
  
• LogiXML
• MeLLmo Inc. (Roambi)
• Microsoft
  
• MicroStrategy
• Oracle
  
• PivotLink
  
• QlikTech
• SAP
• SAS Institute
  
• Tableau Software
• TIBCO Software (Spotfire)
  
• Transpara
• Yellowfin

I have personally invited several dozen BI vendors to participate. If you don't see your vendor's name listed, please ask them to get in touch!

We expect to publish the results of this latest Mobile Computing/Mobile Business Intelligence study sometime next month.

Best,

Howard

Mobile Computing Study - Some Preliminary Findings

As many of you know, Bob Egan (MGI Research) and I have chartered a new market study, focused upon Mobile Computing and Mobile Business Intelligence.

In analyzing the preliminary data, some interesting trends are already emerging. For instance, 70% have indicated that Mobile Computing is either "critical" or "very important" to their IT/Business strategies.

However, we need more data to properly analyze this important market trend and that's where you can help!

Please use the link below to access and complete the survey:

Click here to access the survey!

The survey only takes about 10 minutes to complete and we'll provide you with a copy of the findings when they're published!

Thanks in advance for your support!

Best,



Chief Research Officer
Dresner Advisory Services

Cool Comments From New Mobile Computing Study

Hello Folks!

As you know our new Mobile Computing & Mobile Business Intelligence market study is now underway and we're getting some fascinating comments.

Here are a few of them:

Mobile BI is very important to us. Many here are mobile and not tethered to an office, so the ability to remain connected to the business / BI while away or traveling is very important.

For me mobile BI is nothing more than BI on the go. People don't talk of mobile email, as it is just expected. BI will go exactly the same way. It goes where I work. It's not mobile, it just is "BI ".

We are trying to think of BI not as a complex, expensive system, but as a pervasive form of corporate-wide reporting and alerting for every employee. Mobile BI will enhance this concept. But, the solution needs to be $5 per user per month and cannot have a $1M back-end system.

We plan to continue data collection through the end of September and would like to invite you to participate! Click here to be directed to the study to share your perspective and plans for Mobile Computing and Mobile BI. The survey process takes only about 10 minutes to complete.

Thanks in advance!

Best,

Howard

Announcing Our New Mobile Computing Market Study

Hello Folks!

I am pleased to announce that we have officially launched a new market study, in partnership with renowned Mobile Computing expert, Bob Egan, of MGI Research.

This new study will address important issues surrounding Mobile Computing broadly – and will include a special section on Business Intelligence.

This will allow us to explore some of the overarching issues surrounding Mobile Computing - including platforms, technologies, applications and security as well as key Mobile Business Intelligence issues surrounding required features, usage trends and products.

Our plan is to collect data through the end of September and publish the findings in mid October. As always, qualified participants will receive a copy of the study findings.

It takes approximately 10 minutes to complete the survey.

Click here to complete the survey today!

Thanks for your support!

Best,

Howard

Integrity: You either have it or you don't

Hello Folks!

These past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about integrity and ethics. To my way of thinking, integrity - being honest and truthful - is paramount both personally and professionally. And, generally, I believe that most people and organizations embrace this concept.

However, recently, I encountered an exception. Here's what happened:

Several weeks ago I visited a certain Business Intelligence software vendor's offices where they briefed me on their latest product release. During my visit (during which the CEO was present) it became clear that they had been actively using some of my copyrighted content without permission.

To be clear, I make a lot of my content available for free - on my blog, through social media and through the trade press. Had this vendor asked me, I would have directed them to one of those sources. Instead, they chose to use content directly from a copyrighted study - without permission and to which they were not entitled.

When I challenged them, they apologized, told me it was an oversight, and assured me that they would properly license the content. Ultimately, they reneged on that commitment and removed the content instead of licensing it.

At the heart of the matter is an issue of integrity. Had I not happened to visit them, they would have continued to use my intellectual property without permission. This scenario is even more surprising since this very issue (IP protection) remains a daunting software industry problem.

Some colleagues have encouraged me to expose their identity. Instead, I am using this as the impetus to add a new "Integrity" metric to the Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study (TM) for 2012. In this way, all vendors' customers will have a chance to share their opinions regarding the honesty and truthfulness of vendors - including the one that I have been referring to.

In conclusion, I believe that we should all strive to conduct ourselves with the utmost personal and professional integrity. And, we must insist upon it from others. Those lacking integrity (including BI software vendors) should be shunned.

What's your opinion?

Best,

Howard