trends

“Lost cats and BI,” my latest on Information Management

October 14, 2011

What the early days of desktop publishing may tell about today’s self-service BI. Read all about it in my latest column at Information Management.

Read the full article →

Don’t weep for IT

March 29, 2011

Like some about-to-be-deposed Middle East dictators, some IT people fear the barbarians at the door that Dave Wells hints at. In a recent interview with Information Management editorial director Jim Ericson, Dave talked about the “storm” about to overwhelm IT departments. Then there are the reactions to that.

Read the full article →

Tableau caught them looking

August 4, 2010

Wipe away that tear you have shed for BI marketing. Take heart in this: The golden oldies — those tired verses like “faster, better decisions” — have never come closer to receding into the support roles where they belong. A new strategy has been proving itself able to hook even onlookers who swore they really [...]

Read the full article →

Self tracking is business intelligence

May 10, 2010

Back when secretaries were common, you could have had yours track your day in 15-minute increments. In his book The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker suggested this as a way to find out what you really did all day. The results were usually, let’s say, a starting point for improvement. Tracking your time then and now [...]

Read the full article →

Bring in the shrinks for decision analysis

January 19, 2010

Now comes the hard part in business intelligence: figuring out how the humans can make better use of all our data and tools for decision making, writes Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. Let’s bring in the shrinks. When Wayne points to a trend, it’s news even if others might have already foreseen it. He’s [...]

Read the full article →

BI’s next round: What’s going to dominate?

October 14, 2009

With all the talk about technology, let’s pause to refresh with three basics — culture, conversation, and collaboration. These basics will take center stage in BI’s future, and they’ll help decide which tools dominate.

Read the full article →

Time for traditional BI vendors to “pass the baton”

February 17, 2009

The shouts from the back of the BI room seem to be getting louder. In various ways, they’re saying let Big BI die. Former TDWI education director Dave Wells, visual analytics critic Stephen Few, and Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot are back there. Others, too. Last spring, Wells proposed a new, people-centric definition of business [...]

Read the full article →

Predicting BI trends and saying you’re sorry

December 17, 2008

We forget most failed predictions quickly. If you make a bad one, you just say “let’s move on,” and you’re as good as moved on. But sometimes you meet the kind of guy I say hello to near my office—the kind professional forecasters hope they never meet.

Read the full article →

Craving value: sparks for a new economic engine

October 30, 2008

It’s hard to see through the smoke as our financial house burns down, I know. But what I’ve noticed is more interesting: the first signs of rebuilding. This month, three experts I read—visual analytics expert Stephen Few, Competing on Analytics author Tom Davenport and digital-media economy specialist Umair Haque—all seem to have knit recent blog [...]

Read the full article →

Companies look to BI to reduce energy cost

October 3, 2008

Companies are looking to BI tools for help with rising energy costs, says Dan Esty, co-author of Green into Gold and the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale University.

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries