We’re getting ready for Tableau Conference 2016 here at Ironside. With only a short time left until November 7th, our team is preparing for which parts of the conference they’re most excited to take in. And, more importantly, developing strategies for prioritizing where to spend their time. I got a chance to catch up quick with Crystal Meyers and Katelyn Tolbert, two of our Tableau-certified consultants, to hear what they’re looking forward to and get their perspectives on where people should be focusing at the conference. Read more
Tag Archive for: Business Intelligence
As part of the accelerated release schedule initiated with the introduction of Cognos Analytics last December, IBM made the latest release, Cognos 11.0.4 aka Cognos Analytics Release 4, available on September 16th.
While each of the previous releases have included enhancements and new functionality, Cognos Analytics Release 4 is significant enough that we wanted to present an article to our community focusing on what we feel the most compelling new features are based the time we’ve spent exploring the updated platform. Read more
Tableau 10 was released on August 15th, and it is quite an upgrade. I’ve been spending some time doing hands-on testing of the new version, and I’m excited to share some of the new features I’ve explored with you.
In addition to a new custom font, new color palettes, and new themes that make Tableau more beautiful and visually appealing than ever, Tableau 10 has made great strides in bringing some of the most widely requested features from past releases into reality for this one. I’m going to walk you through some of the ones we at Ironside find most compelling and explain what the practical impact of each one is on the overall functionality of Tableau. This article will cover the following new features: Read more
If modern business data is a river, then traditional enterprise business intelligence is a bucket. Sure, you can pull some valuable and reliable insights at regular intervals that will help you take the pulse of what’s going on day to day, but there’s a much larger percentage of valuable insight that’s just going to wash by. That’s why having a complementary data discovery strategy is so important: it helps you be where you need to be in that flood to catch what’s most relevant to your current business concerns. One of the ways Ironside is helping our clients get to this level of self-service flexibility is by becoming a Tableau partner. Read more
Tableau’s powerful data discovery and visual analytics capabilities make it an ideal tool for enabling end users to achieve data driven insights at the speed of business. It puts data in the hands of the business users who have the most to gain from it in an intuitive manner that allows for rapid visualization and actionable insight through self-service analytics. Read more
The BI software market is continually becoming larger and more complex to navigate. Any organization looking to implement, update, complement, or replace BI tools has surely been inundated with information from dozens of vendors offering potentially hundreds of business analytics technologies. How does one begin the process of narrowing the playing field and choosing the right solution?
Ironside is here to help. This article represents our thoughts on what to look for in a BI tool and explores some of the tools we think work well in different business cases: Birst, IBM Cognos Analytics, Microsoft, MicroStrategy, Qlik, and Tableau. Read more
On June 23rd, Ironside hosted a webinar with Pitney Bowes on how to gain valuable insight when you seamlessly integrate Location Intelligence and business analytics. Crystal Meyers, BI Engagement Manager with Ironside and Heidi Geronimo, Principal Product Manager for LI with Pitney Bowes presented on how Location Intelligence, regardless of size, is a strategic priority for insurers, especially in the Property & Casualty area.
Insurers need precise efficient ways to aggregate, visualize, and assess P&C risk. We will review what can be done to diminish these risks and show a live demo of a risk aggregation solution which was designed specifically for P&C Insurers.
Ironside’s partners help us empower our clients and deliver value from data and analytics using the best technology for their particular business needs, which is why we’re excited to announce that we’ve added Domo to that list. Domo’s flexible, collaborative, and intuitive platform represents a strong approach to modern self-service analytics, and being a Domo partner lets us bring our clients actionable insights from diverse data sources even in low-IT environments. Read more
Domo is a tool that has stood out among the many data discovery-oriented analytics solutions now hitting the market thanks to how quickly it can have a practical impact on specific functional or industry business cases. It represents the realities of modern business:
- The questions organizations ask to support decision making are constantly evolving.
- Traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions aren’t flexible enough to cope with the speed of these changes.
- Business leaders need tools that enable them quickly, not tools they fight to use.
Ironside is happy to announce that one of our long-time professional services veterans, Scott Misage, will be taking on a broader management role as our Business Intelligence Practice Lead. With his history as a crucial contributor to and point person on many diverse and complex analytics projects across a variety of industries during his time as an Engagement Manager, Scott was a natural choice to head up the Ironside Business Intelligence practice and keep us at the forefront of innovation in the space.
About Scott
Scott is one of those rare leaders who is fully immersed in every possible detail of Ironside’s business analytics offerings but who can also deliver on the big picture and see the overall goals and strategies behind those individual solutions. This is why Scott has made a name for himself as a top thinker around both the performance of our solutions and their integration with one another.
Scott’s Specialties: Business Intelligence Advisory and Implementation, Performance Management Strategy, Enterprise Data Management and Architecture, Data Discovery, Bimodal Analytics, New Technology Discovery/Evaluation, Analytics Adoption
Focus and Goals
In his new role as Business Intelligence Practice Lead, Scott is committed to expanding our clients’ understanding of what a business analytics solution can do for them.
“It’s way more than just your standard BI reporting,” he says. “With all the advancements that have occurred, both in terms of the expanding focus on data discovery and the integration of predictive capabilities, business analytics is becoming this central connective fabric that really unifies and communicates across your whole environment. Through data, it unlocks the past, present, and future of your organization.”
This evolution is something Ironside already has a jump on due to Scott’s leadership in embracing and pushing forward a philosophy of bimodal analytics. Building on both our foundation in traditional enterprise BI structures and innovations in the areas of visualization, dashboarding, and data discovery, Scott is helping us provide the ad hoc capabilities that are in such high demand currently without compromising on the governance standards that allow analytics systems to function effectively.
“The whole bimodal analytics idea really hinges on balance,” he states. “It’s about getting a conversation going between your formal mode 1 BI infrastructure with all those recurring enterprise reports and your moving-at-the-speed-of-business mode 2 data discovery tools that uncover new insights. The key is to make sure there’s a process in place for this and that data quality gets kept as the main priority.”
Scott is also involved in building a deeper connection between the Business Intelligence and Analytics Advisory practice areas. Because there are so many tools out there on the market, having the ability to smoothly transition between evaluating options and building strategies and executing the technical elements needed to make those recommendations real is critical.
“We’re spoiled for choice in terms of business analytics tools, so it can get tricky to find the exact right fit,” he asserts. “Our practices together have the unique ability to both evaluate the tools from a technical and business perspective and then see the results of those evaluations through to completion, enabling the client along the way and delivering highly valuable solutions.”
If you’d like to see more of Scott’s perspectives as both a consultant and Business Intelligence Practice Lead, check out the articles he’s written on our website. You can also visit our Business Intelligence page to see what Scott’s team is involved in and how they can help you discover and build your ideal business analytics solution.
Ironside helps companies translate business goals and challenges into technology solutions that enable insightful analysis, data-driven decision making and continued success. We help you structure, integrate and augment your data, while transforming your analytic environment and improving governance.