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The Importance of Planning and Forecasting in BI
From PARIS Technologies
The budgeting and forecasting process for most organizations is long and tedious and occurs on an annual basis, at least. Companies try to do it more often to improve accuracy and aim to ultimately implement a procedure for continuous planning, rolling forecasts, and driver-based planning.
Unlike any other business process, budgeting and forecasting is unique because it is forward thinking. Business processes like accounting, inventory tracking, invoicing, shipping, etc. are based on actual events from the past and present.
This is a fundamental difference as it also defines how the data from these processes are managed. Essentially, actual events are captured as transactions in ERPs, supply chain systems, invoicing and accounting systems, etc., and data related to it is effectively stored in its databases. On the other hand, budgets and forecasts typically reside in spreadsheets where aggregate data is entered by several people in the organization.
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How to Set Up a Pivot Table as a Spreadsheet Database
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Fast Data: How to Gain Insights from Big Data
In this Forbes.com article, Making Big Data Fast, Howard Baldwin makes a great point about data needing to be FAST in order to deliver value. Big data has a historical focus, whereas Fast Data seeks to enable action. For us at OLAP.com, we have seen "fast" as an...
Big Data vs. Fast Data
This article "Which Do We Need More: Big Data or Fast Data?" from Entrepreneur.com shines a light on the buzz word Big Data, and makes a reference to the Fresh Prince of Belair, which is always awesome. The article astutely points out that Big Data is not the answer...
Which OLAP is Best?
OLAP technology has continued to develop, a good indicator of its broad applicability in the software solution market. And though newer doesn't always mean improved, our opinion is that the most recent OLAP technologies are faster and (generally) better than their...
Why Excel isn’t Enough for Businesses
The article, The File-less Organization: Why Excel Isn’t Enough for Businesses, from Dataversity.net is quite astute in the way it identifies Excel as a problem--noting that each manager gathers his or her own version of the numbers to bring to a meeting. And so in...
4 Bad BI Habits to Drop in 2015
This article from the Sisense blog has a valuable little list of Bad BI Habits to Break in 2015. To-dos for the new year are suggested, like "embracing big data" and "getting a grip on all data." We tend to agree, because data is going to continue to grow in vastness...
Will Business Intelligence ever be Intelligent?
From Forbes.com, this article sparked a lot of interaction on our social media outlets, and we think it is an important one: Business Intelligence (BI) Isn't Very Intelligent, Yet. Yes, big companies talk about BI like they know what is going on. Fact is, very few...
Is HTAP the latest type of OLAP?
Some vendors have run from the four letters OLAP…and yet, articles continue to be published, and assertions made, that “analytical processing” is entering a new phase. There’s a new acronym in the market, HTAP, which stands for Hybrid Transactional/Analytical...
The Need for Business Analytics, even Inside the Dean’s Office
You may not think that business analytics as a concept applies to academics, but access to meaningful and timely information is critical to the proper function of a dean’s office. Anyone who has been a dean or worked in the dean's office knows that. And, like in any...
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Types of OLAP Systems
MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP... what's the difference? And modern OLAP for this century.
History of OLAP and BI
Learn about the history of OLAP technology with this comprehensive inforgraphic