recession

San Francisco cab driver’s dashboard

July 13, 2009

I asked a San Francisco taxi driver I happened to sit next to about indicators he sees. I didn’t mean “low oil,” I meant big things. Whether the economy is still falling or not, for one. Figure out how to collect tip data from cabbies and waiters and you’ve have a good early indicator of [...]

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Recession reactions: hunkerers and builders

June 11, 2009

There are the hunkerers and the builders. Those are the two basic reactions to the recession that Jill Dychè observes. She’s a principal down at Baseline Consulting, and she reports seeing more builders. The hunkerers “are using the economy as an excuse for a fair bit of inertia,” she emails. But the builders are using [...]

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Recession: value of alert messaging resonates

June 4, 2009

KnowledgeSync automates the kind of routine tasks that skilled staff disdain: issuing simple invoices, inquiry followups, low-inventory alerts, etc. It’s a BI specialty that cuts cost fast. VP of sales and marketing Don Farber says that, considering the economy, he’s pleased with just a five- to seven-percent dip in sales this year. The benefits are [...]

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Recession: Government workers say one thing’s for sure

June 3, 2009

Members of the “large government organization” my secret source addressed on Thursday are sure of one thing: One day, someone with authority is going to walk in and demand records, complete records, on where how they used the Troubled Asset Relief Program money. These visitors will ask to see where money went and how it [...]

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Upturn, downturn, hot dogs

November 24, 2008

Everybody’s talking about the recession, but that’s just theory at the buffet. There, mini-recessions come and go. One day it’s not-too-bad pork loin, and the next day it’s lukewarm hot dogs.

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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 [...]

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Recession’s benefits for BI

October 23, 2008

A recession would benefit business intelligence, say two industry experts I talked to last week.

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Did someone say “panic”? Not in BI

October 16, 2008

Last January, I surveyed BI consultants to see what the season’s recession was doing to BI. Things were going fine, most reported. This week I’m following up with them on the Panic of ’08.

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When economists say “slowdown”

March 23, 2008

If there’s one reliable sign that a recession is coming, it’s when the experts say they see none coming. I’ve survived four. “Oh, maybe a slowdown, yes…” they say. Now, in today’s New York Times, Charles Duhigg argues that what’s unlikely is a “full blown depression.” Quoth Duhigg: Why? Because so many of them have [...]

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What a recession might mean for business intelligence

January 25, 2008

BI was made for turbulent times, wasn’t it? At least the handful of consultants I talked to this week think so. There seems to be not a shred of fear among them. I’m writing the story for TDWI.

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