Barbara Lewis

Are there different use cases for smartphones and tablets for mobile BI?

April 7, 2011

Barbara Lewis answered this question

Absolutely. Form factor is a big determinant here. Many smartphone users are happy with simply viewing reports and dashboards on their smartphones. Screen real estate is small, and it's more difficult to do drill-down and ad hoc reporting using mobile navigation tools.
Tablets have much larger ... more

Business Intelligence Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for implementing an agile BI strategy?

IBM0324

Jonathan Wu

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March 23, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 5 other people answered this question

Agile BI is business intelligence that is quickly deployed, easily updated or extended, and easy to use by many people in an organization. In that way, it easily adapts to rapidly changing business needs and stays relevant.
There's a need for Agile BI because traditional ... more

3 ways to handle and work for an autocratic, micro-managing and de-humanizing boss?

Agile BI

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March 23, 2011

Barbara Lewis recommends this answer by Greg Hackett

1. Pre-empt- give them more information than they need. It might seem time-consuming but you can turn it into a positive if you are also creating the information for yourself and use it to make business decisions.
2. Work on your PR- if you think he ... more

Jan. 24, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 5 other people answered this question

What are the top questions a buyer should ask a BI vendor?

The questions to be asked will be very specific to the goals that the company is trying to accomplish.
That said, here is a whitepaper that Birst put together on the 11 Key Questions to ask a BI Vendor: http://go.birst.com/LP=33?src=focus
While we're a SaaS BI company, ... more

Business Intelligence Vendors

How can we transition from treating BI as an IT project to treating BI as a cultural transformation?

Jan. 14, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 4 other people answered this question

BI becomes culturally transformative when it is used throughout an organization in some way, shape, or form.
Many traditional BI implementations actually touch very few people in an organization - they go to the most senior executives or to ivory tower business analysts. So front ... more

Business Intelligence 2.0

Jan. 13, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 3 other people answered this question

What are 5 fundamental features every Business Intelligence solution should include?

This question can be answered in multiple ways, such as - in terms of technological features, or in terms of capabilities.
In terms of features, BI is considered complete when you have all of the fundamental components:
1. ETL engine (Extract, Transform and Load) - ... more

Business Intelligence Solution

Jan. 13, 2011

Barbara Lewis recommends this answer by Benjamin Breeland

Does business intelligence make sense for (really) small businesses?

Here is an article I read today that might help you understand why business intelligence makes sense for businesses of all sizes. Just as a car, regardless of size, comes with a speedometer, fuel gauge, and "check engine" light, your small business needs to know ... more

What are some examples of good HR BI dashboards?

Return on Investment

Jan. 12, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 2 other people answered this question

Hi Barbara,
The dashboards that you need really depend on what the objectives of the HR team are and to which information you have access.
For example, you could be focused on any of these things:
1. Hiring and retention
2. Identifying potential HR litigation or liability ... more

Human Resources

Business Intelligence 2.0

What are the top business intelligence publications?

Jan. 11, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 3 other people answered this question

I pay attention to:
The BeyeNetwork - www.beyenetwork.com (which got acquired by Tech Target, so its name may change soon)
Information Management - www.information-management.com
CIO - www.cio.com more

Jan. 11, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 1 other person answered this question

What's the next big thing in SaaS BI?

Mobile is an emerging area that makes natural sense for SaaS BI. Mobile deployment is easiest to manage with a SaaS solution, since it is experienced through the web browser.
1. It's easier to get started with mobile BI when it's SaaS.
IT avoids the ... more

Business Intelligence Software Solutions

3 more topics

Jan. 11, 2011

Barbara Lewis and 2 other people answered this question

Top 3 reasons to consider a SaaS BI system over on-premise?

I agree with Dan, although I have a slightly different take:
1.) Immediate and Long Term Affordability - SaaS solutions are subscriptions to services provided over the internet. So there's no hardware to buy, no software to deploy, and no consultants to engage. You also pay ... more

Excel for BI Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for using Excel as a business intelligence tool?

Dec. 1, 2010

Barbara Lewis recommends this answer by Hrvoje Smolic

Microsoft Excel is primarily not a BI tool, but more and more with each version he resembles one. In lastest version (MS Excel 2010) there are several nice additions that can make your analysing more exciting:
1. Use Sparklines - and incredible transparent, compact and easy ... more

What are the top features to examine when buying a business intelligence-type system for SMBs?

Best Practices

5 more topics

Nov. 15, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 1 other person answered this question

Hi Steve,
SMBs have particular needs, since they are more cost conscious and also are less likely to have strong IT support over time. Their data needs, however, are usually anything but simple, and can often rival much larger organizations.
That said, here are the things ... more

What can BI delivered though the cloud give me that I can't get from an on-premise solution?

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Nov. 15, 2010

Christopher Jablonski selected a best answer for

This question was asked during Shawn Rogers' presentation, "SaaS Business Intelligence" during the Focus Interactive Summit: Business Intelligence – Defining Success. more

Business Intelligence Software Solutions

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Oct. 19, 2010

Barbara Lewis recommends this comment by Blewis

Enterprise vs. Open Source vs. SaaS BI: Some Thoughts

Thanks for mentioning Birst as a leading example of SaaS BI.
To underscore your TCO point, an evaluation of the TCO of SaaS vs. Enterprise has shown that SaaS BI can be 33% the 5 year TCO of on-premise software solutions. That's a significant savings, ... more

Analytics

What are the best Business Intelligence products for SMBs?

2 more topics

Oct. 19, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 2 other people answered this question

Hi John,
There are a lot more BI vendors for SMBs than there used to be, so it's a good time to be looking. Since you're a small advertising firm, I'm assuming that you don't have a large IT team and that your budget is limited. ... more

What are some BI trends that we have seen in 2010?

Oct. 15, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 13 other people answered this question

Here are a few things that we're seeing, as a BI vendor ourselves:
1. Greater embrace of a portfolio BI strategy. There was a rush to consolidate, with the assumption that having one "throat to choke" was the best option. However, not all BI tools ... more

What is the point of the "business intelligence magic quadrant"?

Trends for 2010

Oct. 1, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 3 other people answered this question

Hi Paul,
You've already gotten some good responses on how to interpret the Gartner BI Magic Quadrant, so I thought I'd address the 2nd part of your question, which was more around the options for SMBs. There are a lot more BI vendors for the midmarket ... more

Gartner

The Power of Supply Chain Analytics

Oct. 1, 2010

Barbara Lewis commented on a brief

For a good supply chain analytics case study, check out how Citrix is using Birst' sSaaS BI solution to achieve 99%+ on-time delivery and improve coordination with key suppliers: http://www.birst.com/pdf/birst_cs_citrix_systems.pdf
Or check out the webinar with Nari Viswanathan of Aberdeen that also covers the Citrix case ... more

Oct. 1, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 2 other people answered this question

Sales Analytics: What are good examples of companies using analytics to improve sales processes?

Hi Craig,
I work for Birst, a SaaS BI company (www.birst.com), and I can give you a couple of customer examples.
In general, we've studied our customers who have used our sales analytics solution, and, on average, they see a 22% increase in deal size ... more

Sales

Analytics

Is a data warehouse required to implement business intelligence?

Oct. 1, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 6 other people answered this question

I agree with Odusina and Hrvoje that a data warehouse provides a much stronger basis for analyzing the data, especially when dealing with multiple data sources.
That said, a data warehouse is generally a fundamental part of a BI solution. If you buy a traditional ... more

Business Intelligence Solution

Has anyone had success using Twitter for BtoB lead gen?

Sept. 30, 2010

Barbara Lewis asked a question

Sept. 30, 2010

Barbara Lewis and 1 other person answered this question

How does a BI system support your sales department?

Hi Tim,
I work for a BI company, so I can provide some insight into how our customers are using it for sales analytics and what they get out of it.
First off, people often want to know how BI is going to help them ... more

Business Intelligence Implementation

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