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Wayne Eckerson

Data served direct-to-exec with Napkyn

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We’ve heard about shortage of data-analysis help, and about senior execs who pooh-pooh the influence of analysis in decision-making, and about the “dead” self-service analysis. So when a vendor tells me about a direct-to-exec service, featuring a sort of concierge of analytics, I pull up a chair to listen.

Napkyn, five years old last month and major brands under its belt, assigns a senior analyst to lead a long-term relationship with one executive. Behind the analyst stands a 13-person team that collaborates on the exec’s behalf, putting forward experts as needed. One team member, for example, has 15 years’ experience in multi-variate testing.… Read the rest “Data served direct-to-exec with Napkyn”

Men in the middle see both sides of the IT-business split

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The in-between people see it all from their position between IT and business users. Wayne Eckerson calls them the “purple people” because they’re half IT red and half business blue, and others might call them just con artists. By either name, they see more than the purebreds.

Today at the sixth Tableau Customer Conference, just upwind from Washington D.C, I ran into two men in such roles.

They appear in one set of clothes when facing the information technology people. Then in an instant they turn around to appear in other clothes to business people. They win the confidence of both.

BI’s “promised land”: bigger than tech

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At first glance, this pair of tweets last week sounds like a version of BI’s traditional campfire song:

I’ve seen the promised (BI) land, and we are there: databases that fly and process any data; BI tools that are easy to use and fast. Wow! I’d retire but mainstream firms will take 10 years to capitalize on all the new technology & overcome dirty data & politics.

The refrain might go, “When tools fly, they will fly by themselves!” Other lines would caution us to update often, eliminate “politics,” and eat our carrots.