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Top three ways BI buyers choose badly

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Most people shopping for business intelligence tools think they’re sophisticated, observes a sales person who often represents a large vendor in TDWI exhibit halls. Most of these people are deluded.

He may sound harsh, but he observes all this not bitterly but with good humor.

“They buy [BI] like anything else they buy,” he explains. “They put out a bunch of RFPs and go through this whole process and stuff, and eventually they buy the one that’s maroon.”

Over years, he has identified the top three reasons people buy, and the underlying motivation:

1. Career. The chosen tool decides the career of those who will learn it, massage it, and become co-dependent with it.… Read the rest “Top three ways BI buyers choose badly”

Antidote for too-dull-to-read case studies: fiction

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Users I interview for case studies tell me good stories. But most come with a poison pill: you can’t write it because it’ll embarrass someone. Just try getting it through the rounds of approval.

The smart marketer’s answer: Make up a composite!

If, as Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman writes, fiction is the best way to understand Libya under dictator Muammer Qaddafi, then it just might work to understand the drama within organizations.

How much do you really understand from news accounts from Libya? Before the current crisis, most news emphasized Muammer’s weird style of dress, his ranting speeches, and his “voluptuous Ukrainian nurse.”… Read the rest “Antidote for too-dull-to-read case studies: fiction”

Impress your colleagues with year-end predictions!

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Why should the smart people have all the fun with year-end predictions? You can issue your own! At this time of year, even hopeless nitwits can seem smart.

Once you set up a blog — any free service will do — all you have to do is throw together your trends. Keep these easy-to-use techniques in mind.

• Re-use last year’s trends. Does anyone really believe that 2010’s trends sat down in December for a cosmo and never stood up again? You can safely predict that this year’s trends will be next year’s, too.

• Search in Google for your industry’s name and “trends.”… Read the rest “Impress your colleagues with year-end predictions!”