Data Doghouse - performance management, business intelligence, and data warehousing

The Transformative Power of Smarter Analytics

I'll be speaking in the following webinar Wednesday, April 15:

The Transformative Power of Smarter Analytics

Register

Fast, flexible and affordable -- that's what businesses demand these days of their analytics environments. And there's no time like the present to leverage the heavy-duty number-crunching power of smarter analytics, either to find new revenue streams or stem the tide of expenses.

Register for this Information Management Espresso Shot Web Seminar to learn how these organizations capitalized on the power of smarter analytics. Attendees will learn:

- How smarter analytics can yield immediate results for your business
- What companies are gaining by super-charging their analytics environments
- How organizations are dramatically increasing query performance
- Why column-based technology makes sense for smarter analytics
- Where and when to use a column-based approach

With the benefit of smarter analytics, companies can achieve a wide range of positive results. For example, a financial reporting firm replaced its mainframe for analyzing data on 280 million people, and now saves $100,000 per day. A loyalty marketing provider added a new layer of buying-pattern analytics and watched query performance increase by 500%. And a large health care consultancy faced significant scalability challenges, but wound up reducing storage by 70%, while dramatically improving query response time.

Speaker: Rick Sherman of Athena IT Solutions

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TDWI Boston Chapter meeting on April 9, 2009

If you are a Boston BI/DW Professional,

My fellow chapter officers and I cordially invite you to attend our upcoming TDWI Boston Chapter meeting on April 9, 2009. Come meet other local BI/DW professionals, swap business cards, share ideas, and exchange career advice while listening to quality presentations in a vendor-neutral setting, which is the hallmark of TDWI events. Please note that TDWI membership is not required to attend this TDWI Boston meeting.See our meeting agenda below.

And if you get a chance, please introduce yourself.

When: Thursday, April 9, 2009, 1 - 4 p.m.
Where: Children’s Hospital Boston
1 Autumn Street, Auditorium A,
Boston, MA
 
Note: This meeting is on Children’s Hospital Boston’s main city campus, not the suburban campus. The main campus is located in the Longwood Medical Area, which is known for very ample public transportation, but heavy traffic. Please use public transportation if at all possible.

Here is a link to public transportation options: Public Transportation to 1 Autumn St., Boston

Here is a link to a map and driving directions: Map and Driving Directions to 1 Autumn St., Boston

The building is at the corner of Autumn Street and Longwood Avenue. The best bet for parking is in the garage across the street at 375 Longwood Avenue. 

Agenda:

12:30 p.m.  A light buffet lunch will be served!
1:00 p.m.    Meeting Kickoff
1:15 p.m.    “The Power of BI in Healthcare: A clinical perspective”
1:45 p.m.    “The Power of BI in Healthcare: A technology perspective”
2:15 p.m.    Break and Peer Networking
2:45 p.m.   “Real World Challenges of BI in Healthcare: A Panel Discussion”

Panelists:     Shiby Thomas, Boston Medical Center
                    Ronald Wilkinson, Children’s Hospital Boston
                    Michael Correll, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
 
3:30 p.m.     Chapter Business
3:45 p.m.     Close and Raffles

Please RSVP here, NOTE: Please be sure and select TDWI Boston when asked for the location of the chapter meeting. Space is limited so sign up early!

How to Boost Service, Cut Costs and Deliver Great Customer Experiences - Even in an Economic Downturn

SmartData Collective and Teradata Corporation present a free webinar:

How to Boost Service, Cut Costs and Deliver Great Customer Experiences - Even in an Economic Downturn

April 16, 2009 - 11 a.m. EST

REGISTER NOW!

The paradox of tougher economic times is that customers demand more value, not less, at exactly the moment companies are looking for more cost-effective ways to deliver service. Web and mobile technologies provide important avenues to both savings and quality but the key to success remains knowing more about your existing and potential customers than your competitors do. To win the business of today's mobile, tech-savvy, product-educated, value-conscious customers you have to dig deeper, think harder, and truly understand their preferences and behavior. You have to deliver a customer experience that is superior to one they can get somewhere else or you'll lose their business.

In this webinar a panel of experts will discuss how technology can not only help you provide an experience that customers will love, but cut costs and help you differentiate your communications strategies from your competition.

Tune in to a live interactive discussion with a panel of sales experts, and get your questions answered. Don't miss your chance to hear from:

Dave Schrader, Teradata

Dr. Dave Schrader is a Marketing Director for the Teradata Solutions group, responsible for marketing the Active Enterprise Intelligence initiative. Dave joined NCR in 1991 and held various positions in Engineering - Advanced Development until 1998 when he moved into Marketing. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue, and has published widely on Customer Management.

Lisa Loftis, CRM and BI Expert

Lisa Loftis is a CRM and BI expert with 20+ years experience helping organizations adopt a customer focus. Lisa has a strong background in the application of CRM and BI principles in the Banking, Investment, Insurance, Telecomm, Retail, Utilities, Entertainment, Manufacturing and Distribution, and other industries, and recently co-authored Building the Customer-Centric Enterprise

Curtis Rapp, Air2Web

Curtis Rapp, Air2Web's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, brings more than 20 years of experience in executive sales management creating and developing high performance sales processes at start-ups and established organizations. Previous executive and senior level positions held by Rapp include posts at Omnilink, Interwoven, MAPICS and IBM.

Rebecca Bucnis, Teradata

Rebecca Bucnis, Global Program Director for Teradata, is a marketing specialist currently responsible for program execution for Retail Customer Management Solutions, active enterprise intelligence and emerging technology solutions. She derives her expertise from over 15 years of consulting and direct positions with retailers and travel and hospitality companies.

Register now and get your questions answered:

• How is the current economy changing customer expectations?
• How does the digital era change the way customers engage with your company?
• How does one balance the need to control and cut costs with the need for more customer insight and improved experiences?
• Where do I start? What are some of the must-have processes and technologies for engaging with customers?

Everyone who registers will also receive a free copy of "Ringing in the Customers: Harnessing the power of Mobile Marketing," a whitepaper by Lisa Loftis.

Brought to you by SmartData Collective and Teradata Corporation.

Welcome to the conversation.

More than just “The Usual Suspects” - Doing Due Diligence for DW and BI Tools

The publishing of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants or Forrester’s Waves is eagerly awaited by vendors in many IT categories, particularly those who scope in the “top” quadrant or wave. I know when the latest data warehousing, data integration or business intelligence reviews are published because the companies who are category leaders start issuing press releases about their accomplishment. Congratulations, we are the best!

In our industry (DW and BI) the core group of products has remained the leader for many years. The companies have changed because of acquisitions, but the underlying products listed stay the same. The top two data integration or ETL (extract, transform and load) products and top three BI (business intelligence) toolsets are perennial winners. And because the market is mature, at least there is a core set of functionality (but there is much innovation and expansion possible), and the leaders pack has been expanding in recent years.

The annual results are getting boring with “The Usual Suspects” being the leaders every year. Sort of like an award show with the same singer or actor/actress winning every year, they may be the leaders in their field but…

This is not a “trash the reviewers” post. The work the industry research firms do is great and they provide an invaluable tool when you’re doing due diligence, especially if you are new to the market. However, these reports are often used as a shortcut to truly doing due diligence or as a hammer to reinforce a bias an IT group may have for a particular product. 

Misusing this research by no means invalidates it, nor suggests that the research methodology is inappropriate. Gartner even suggests how to use their research but, sadly, like warning labels on a pack of cigarettes, readers often ignore this advice.

In “How to Use a Magic Quadrant,” Gartner states:

“Your needs and circumstances should determine how you use the Magic Quadrant, not the other way around. To evaluate vendors in the Leaders quadrant only and ignore those in other quadrants is risky and thus discouraged. For example, a vendor in the Niche Players quadrant could offer functions that are ideally suited to your needs. Similarly, a leader may not offer functions that meet your requirements — for example, its offerings may cost more than competitors', or it may not support your region or industry. Use a Magic Quadrant to narrow your list of choices, but don't base your decision only on the model.”

I think the leaders in these categories are terrific. I have been involved in many successful implementations with these tools and worked with the vendors who sell these tools over the years. And the leaders’ products are not standing still, but continually being updated to incorporate expanded functionality and emerging technologies.

There are many companies that are only beginning their journey using DW, data integration and business intelligence tools. And, there are many more that are trying to shift from data shadow systems or spreadmarts to tools that will improve both business and IT productivity and enable the kind of reporting or analytics that their companies need. In this economy, budgets are tight and companies have to look at the TCO (total cost of ownership) and the amount of skills necessary to develop, deploy and support solutions. TCO is relative to your company size, but regardless IT and business need to look outside the usual suspects if for no other reason than to do the due diligence and determine what truly meets your needs.

A company may end up buying or expanding their use of leaders’ products, but at least they will have truly explored their options. There are very good products available from emerging firms; on-demand software or SaaS (software-as-a-service); open source software (OSS); and, smaller firms that have been around for years with many customers. There have been a quite a few mergers and acquisition (M&A) in our industry, but there are many firms that offer these products.