Posts tagged with "Business Intelligence"

More organizations than ever are taking the plunge and investing in business intelligence (BI) technologies. Cloud hosting has made it infinitely easier and less costly for smaller businesses to bring analytics into the fold, and greater awareness about the role data plays in meaningful business decisions has expanded the sorts of use cases for intelligence. That said, implementing a BI solution is still by no means easy. To get a feel for how to begin addressing that challenge we asked Eric Kimberling, managing partner at Panorama Consulting Solutions, an ERP consulting firm, and Alex Antonatos, a Canada-based Oracle software consultant, about ... READ MORE

Why does everyone care so much about this BI thing so much? Intelligence is any snippet of significant information gleaned off a collection of raw data. For example: a 20,000-row spreadsheet of email addresses mined off registrants on your message board is data; a distribution chart of all the different domain names registrants host their email off of is intelligence. Therein lies the reason for much of the recent enthusiasm over business intelligence (BI) technology. While a lot of the marketing surrounding the products descends into gimmickry, the core functionality behind it doesn't. Who doesn't want more visibility on the reams of ... READ MORE

Big data analytics is changing the way people run their businesses. Big data is in the process completely upending the way businesses make strategic and tactical decisions... We've all heard the familiar hype, haven't we? In some respects "big data analytics" and/or data science is just a new name for a solution organizations have been developing or wanting to develop for awhile: a way to get value out of the reams of data they've warehoused away over the years. It's important not to get misled by the hype, but it's equally important to not let the hype distract from the fact ... READ MORE

SAP’s stellar success in building its blue-chip large enterprise business has often overshadowed its considerable but quieter achievements in small and medium business (SMBs) markets. But SAP is not a household name in the SMB community. Even technology insiders are often surprised to learn that SMBs (or as SAP refers them, small and medium enterprises, or SMEs) account for the majority of SAP’s 197,000 customer base. But at SAP’s first small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) summit, hosted at the company’s New York offices in late November, co-CEO Bill McDermott and other key SAP execs made it clear that SAP is intensifying ... READ MORE

Analytics implementation is basically a no-brainer these days. The fact is that if you have a website, you ought to be tracking as much about your visitors as possible. This can range from simple to very complex analytics. However, there are some things to consider first before implementing your analytics system: What is Your Strategy? Have a plan in place for what you’re going to measure and how you’re going to determine your ROI. Having some direction with goals will keep you from being overwhelmed by data analysis and keep you focused. Also, consider what actions on your site do you want to ... READ MORE

Think of an image for business intelligence and you'll most likely envision something static and immobile--sprawling data centers full of warehoused data, visualization software bound to desktop workstations and demo presentations full of sterile, un-intuitive visuals that further confuse rather than clarify. Roambi's sleek flagship solution addresses those two BI issues: mobility and accessibility. We talked to Roambi president of product innovation Quinton Alsbury to find out about how they seek to democratize the power of BI. What was the inspiration behind Roambi? Well, my partners and I came out of a background in data visualization and intelligent applications and we’re all ... READ MORE

You have now decided what your overall marketing budget is for the upcoming period. But where should you invest these dollars? It can be difficult to decide what to allocate for tools, technology, analysis and the media spend itself including agency fees. First, we’ll discuss current trends in marketing budget allocation and then we’ll give you some tips on how to divvy up the money you have at your disposal. Current Trends According to Forrester Research, 38 percent of B2B marketers (in all industries) are expecting to increase their digital marketing budgets between 1-9 percent. 27 percent expect to increase it between 10-19 ... READ MORE

Business Intelligence (BI) is the blanket term we all use to describe a broad field of tools designed to organize all the data generated and/or gathered by a business and then using it in ways that will be of benefit to the organization. In that sense the theory behind isn't all that different from the one behind most other segments of business software: being an asset in the pursuit of evermore optimization of processes. It's easy to get lopsided view of just what BI can do for an organization though. In the wake of the explosion of work on and interest ... READ MORE

You lay lazily, your scruffy hair half submerged in the marshmallow-like curvature of your pillow, lethargically following the steadfast progression of a solitary ant along the windowsill. You’re sprawled across your arm; it’s numb. But the mere thought of moving is too much. After all, it’s Sunday, and you’d need a good reason to disentangle yourself from the bed sheets. Without motivation, it’s pretty easy to just let the day pass by in an unproductive haze. I think many companies have a similar disposition towards embedded Business Intelligence (BI) – the integration of a reporting and analytics module within an existing software ... READ MORE

Large enterprises are not the only organizations that stand to benefit from using BI software. For a while, business intelligence software was too expensive and too complex to meet the needs of small businesses, many of which rely on simple spreadsheets to analyze critical business data. Today, thanks in part to cost savings afforded by the cloud, there are a host of BI solutions available to help small businesses visualize, analyze, and report on their complex data. Zoho Reports Zoho offers an affordable software-as-a-service business reporting tool suitable for small businesses. You can upload data to Zoho Reports from spreadsheets, databases, ... READ MORE