Jun 13, 2016 | BI Strategy, BI System, Infographic, PARIS Tech blog, Technology and Trends
Be Mindful to Keep these Practices throughout your Business Intelligence Project
Getting Business Intelligence Best Practices to work well is challenging. Check out the 6 best practices outlined in this Infographic. Check it out and see how your organization stacks up. It’s easy to think that bigger is better, or assume you need to start from scratch. Actually its about having BI policies in place, keeping everyone on the team involved, having a clear scope, and making sure everyone is trained up well.
It is also important for a Business Intelligence project to have an analytics model that reflects the organization.
Sep 16, 2015 | BI Solutions, BI Strategy, BI System, OLAP and Excel, PARIS Tech blog, Spreadsheets, Technology and Trends
“Excel is one of those applications that the business world cannot live without.”
So says one of 27 Excel experts commenting on Microsoft’s Power BI Suite and its effect on the great wide world of spreadsheet users.
As Excel lovers, we couldn’t agree more!
There’s a wealth of wisdom in the observations made by these 27 pros. Along with the main topic of what’s new in Power BI Suite, there’s excellent insight on the use of Excel and BI generally. (For a good post about what one expert calls a “running joke in BI communities—‘What is the most used feature in any business intelligence solution?’”, see But, Does It Export to Excel?, from PARIS Technologies.)
About what’s new with Power BI Suite, the experts agree that it delivers significantly powerful new capabilities: from connecting to enterprise data (Power Query) to aggregating differently sourced data (Power Pivot) to creating exciting visualizations (Power View and Power Map—watch out, “Visual Analytics” products!), this suite of tools signifies a whole new era of “self-service BI” for Excel users.
Smart guys and gals that they are, the experts point up some caveats. How will these new capabilities affect a company’s “B.I. workflow[s]”? And, mightn’t Power BI, by empowering Excel user(s), propagate more—and more complex—silos of data among disconnected groups of users? Will IT lose total control, if users feel it’s their Excel-given birthright to reach back to underlying data sets for BI solutions? And as to collaborative work—will SharePoint be the answer, finally?
All the caveats and concerns are certainly worth considering … That said, from our standpoint: we begin with the premise that user-empowering technologies—Excel or otherwise—are a good thing! As for the caveats, won’t someone please invent a technology that addresses concerns about security and collaboration? And one that provides for other application needs, like planning, budgeting and forecasting? Because that’s what people do in Excel! And while they’re at it, a solution that is inclusive of other non-Excel users? (Hmmm, maybe someone has – see here for a description of PARIS’s Olation).
“The future looks very bright for Excel and BI,” says another expert. Here’s to a future that’s bright for all BI users—and no caveats required!
Read the original article, from InvestInTech.com here: 27 Microsoft Excel Experts Predict the Future of Excel in Business Intelligence
Sep 8, 2015 | Application/Data Integration, BI Solutions, BI Strategy, BI System, Data Management, PARIS Tech blog, Technology and Trends
A recent post on the PARIS Tech Blog, The Problem in the BI Market, highlights a few key facts/issues in the BI market. Some of these include disconnected applications, disconnected IT and front-end users, and slow processing times.
Most interesting is the emphasis on connectivity between applications becoming important in the BI market. Presently, most firms struggle to move data collected in one system into another for reporting or delivering to upper management. PARIS suggests that software products will begin to prioritize more and more the ability to collaborate across platforms—sharing data smoothly from one place to another.
The PARIS Tech post discusses IT and end-users being able to use their preferred applications and a shared data set, which leads to the next interesting bit, their emphasis on collaboration and productivity. The software products that will succeed in the future BI market will be those that allow people to easily collaborate because their applications will be connected. They will also automate manual processes and calculations that are performed in Excel today.
Improved collaboration and productivity influence peoples’ lives for the better and makes them enjoy their work more, while they also drive the business towards profitability.
Read the full post on the PARIS Tech blog
Read about using your preferred application and a shared data set with Olation.
