How can business survive without data? Well, 80 percent of eligible users, according to most surveys, do seem to go without. The industry salivates in anticipation of someday colonizing that territory, and it shudders in frustration because they haven’t done it yet. That topic came up last summer at the annual Pacific Northwest BI Summit. […]
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Got analytics? Who will promote the industry?
Business people have everything. They’ve got data, and often it’s clean. They’ve got tools, and many are easy to use. They’ve got visualizations, many of which help. They’ve got domain knowledge, at least most do. What some front line observers find they lack is analytical thinking. Given descriptive data, few business users that BI icon […]
Execs vs. data analysts gives us the Analytics Gap
One insurance company’s chief data scientist is “terrific at what he does,” says his boss, even “brilliant.” The company is lucky to have him. But he never sees the inside of the executive suite. “He is a quirky, quirky guy,” says the boss, “and he is a super powerful dude in what he’s doing for […]
Big Data, big hype, big danger
A remarkable thing happened in Big Data last week. One of Big Data’s best friends poked fun at one of its icons: the Three V’s. The well-networked and alert observer Shawn Rogers, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates, tweeted his eight V’s: “…Vast, Volumes of Vigorously, Verified, Vexingly Variable Verbose yet Valuable Visualized […]
BI’s “promised land”: bigger than tech
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 […]