Back when data was little and simple, self-service analysis advocates started the chant, “Free the data!” IT stood in the way, they said. Fast forward to 2016: “democratized data” has become common, but so has public concern over privacy. That nettlesome struggle drove a discussion that now stands as the data industry’s’ most important discussion […]
Harriet Fryman
“BI for the other 80 percent” at
Information Management
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. […]
Data storytelling will be bigger than data itself
I heard an IBM marketing vice president say last summer, “Storytelling will be huge.” I think so, too. But what are data stories? The big question on the table was what it would take for BI to break out of its miserable five percent penetration into business? Two regulars at the Pacific Northwest BI Summit […]
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 […]
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 […]