This document discusses the importance of understanding user needs before deploying business intelligence solutions. It outlines five key questions to answer about users: 1) their technical skill level, 2) the time they have to analyze information, 3) the types of questions they will ask, 4) how often they are in the office, and 5) how timely the data needs to be. The document recommends gathering this information to determine the right blend of reporting, dashboards, search tools, and other capabilities to meet different user groups' needs. A one-size-fits-all approach is unlikely to result in widespread adoption and satisfaction.
1. The document discusses business use cases, their importance, and provides examples. It explains that use cases help refine requirements, understand processes simply, and avoid misuse of existing models.
2. It gives the example of an e-commerce website search bar to illustrate how use cases can track user requirements to introduce better search algorithms. Advanced search is described as a use case that allows users to refine results.
3. Recruitment is provided as another example where use cases can help understand the simplified process of matching candidates to jobs using big data. This allows recruiters to automate and speed up placements while getting detailed candidate information.
Intranet designs guaranteed to engage and inspireInteract
How to create a beautiful intranet design your users will love in five simple steps: brought to life by outstanding intranet design examples from companies including Sony, Travelex, the NHS, Mattress Firm, Piedmont, the NSPCC, and many more.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
http://www.infoxtechnologies.com/technologies.html
This document discusses artificial intelligence techniques used in RightNow Technologies' knowledge base product called RightNow eService Center (RNeSC). It describes how RNeSC uses various AI methods like collaborative filtering, natural language processing, and emotion detection to automatically organize and present information to users, generate responses, and require little ongoing administration. The document also outlines RightNow's goal of creating a self-maintaining "organic" customer service system and discusses future directions for incorporating additional AI into RNeSC.
The document provides 8 guidelines for choosing the right data science platform for business analytics needs. It discusses factors such as whether the platform can handle all aspects of business analytics, large volumes of data, both structured and unstructured data, and real-time scoring problems. It also addresses whether the platform supports easy-to-use workflows, optimization functions, model management, and communicating insights. The document uses Angoss as an example and describes how its platform meets the guidelines.
Learn How to Maximize Your ServiceNow InvestmentStave
Understand how leading companies are adopting an aPaaS strategy
Learn the evolution of ServiceNow's platform capabilities
Assert IT's influence over shadow IT practices
Evry Digital Advantage IBM keynote on future of retailBrandon Jones
The document discusses how five disruptive forces (customer expectations, technology progress, eroding margins, security breaches, and self-serve retail) are forcing the retail industry to focus on customer engagement, discovery of new ideas, and effective decision making. It outlines how cognitive computing can help retailers overcome limitations and bridge performance gaps by engaging customers, discovering insights, and helping decision making. Finally, it provides a structured roadmap for organizations to follow in nurturing optimism and reducing complacency as they adopt cognitive computing capabilities.
What makes a good intranet and why intarnet failJasper Warren
We are living in a digital age where people want to do more with less. Companies are faced by a growing mountain of data and information they store. More and more companies are finding it harder to manage all their information, how to find the information they want, how to track the information, how to break down the information silo within the company. How do they get their employees working in a more collaborative way?
1. The document discusses business use cases, their importance, and provides examples. It explains that use cases help refine requirements, understand processes simply, and avoid misuse of existing models.
2. It gives the example of an e-commerce website search bar to illustrate how use cases can track user requirements to introduce better search algorithms. Advanced search is described as a use case that allows users to refine results.
3. Recruitment is provided as another example where use cases can help understand the simplified process of matching candidates to jobs using big data. This allows recruiters to automate and speed up placements while getting detailed candidate information.
Intranet designs guaranteed to engage and inspireInteract
How to create a beautiful intranet design your users will love in five simple steps: brought to life by outstanding intranet design examples from companies including Sony, Travelex, the NHS, Mattress Firm, Piedmont, the NSPCC, and many more.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
Having developed itself as a saas head in office productivity and CRM tools, infox offers a number of data analytics platform gearing for both professional
data scientists and mid level staffers who need a self service option. The application has an instictive drag and drop interface and also a
classic spreadsheet interface. infox Analytics is geared for organization that need to give actionable data analytics insight to staffers at every stage.
http://www.infoxtechnologies.com/technologies.html
This document discusses artificial intelligence techniques used in RightNow Technologies' knowledge base product called RightNow eService Center (RNeSC). It describes how RNeSC uses various AI methods like collaborative filtering, natural language processing, and emotion detection to automatically organize and present information to users, generate responses, and require little ongoing administration. The document also outlines RightNow's goal of creating a self-maintaining "organic" customer service system and discusses future directions for incorporating additional AI into RNeSC.
The document provides 8 guidelines for choosing the right data science platform for business analytics needs. It discusses factors such as whether the platform can handle all aspects of business analytics, large volumes of data, both structured and unstructured data, and real-time scoring problems. It also addresses whether the platform supports easy-to-use workflows, optimization functions, model management, and communicating insights. The document uses Angoss as an example and describes how its platform meets the guidelines.
Learn How to Maximize Your ServiceNow InvestmentStave
Understand how leading companies are adopting an aPaaS strategy
Learn the evolution of ServiceNow's platform capabilities
Assert IT's influence over shadow IT practices
Evry Digital Advantage IBM keynote on future of retailBrandon Jones
The document discusses how five disruptive forces (customer expectations, technology progress, eroding margins, security breaches, and self-serve retail) are forcing the retail industry to focus on customer engagement, discovery of new ideas, and effective decision making. It outlines how cognitive computing can help retailers overcome limitations and bridge performance gaps by engaging customers, discovering insights, and helping decision making. Finally, it provides a structured roadmap for organizations to follow in nurturing optimism and reducing complacency as they adopt cognitive computing capabilities.
What makes a good intranet and why intarnet failJasper Warren
We are living in a digital age where people want to do more with less. Companies are faced by a growing mountain of data and information they store. More and more companies are finding it harder to manage all their information, how to find the information they want, how to track the information, how to break down the information silo within the company. How do they get their employees working in a more collaborative way?
The document discusses researching client needs to provide appropriate IT support. It recommends conducting a needs analysis by examining a client's business processes, assessing which IT systems could improve operations, and understanding support needs. The process involves fostering relationships, analyzing current IT environments, identifying gaps, developing options, and suggesting solutions. It also discusses determining appropriate support levels, such as informal peer support, dedicated support positions, help desk support, or outsourcing. Support functions for a website may include maintaining content, database administration, version control, troubleshooting, customization, training and more.
Delivering Machine Learning Solutions by fmr Sears Dir of PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- Key stages in the Data Science process
- Unique challenges ML products present
- Opportunities for Product Managers to make a big impact
The cognitive advantage insights from early adopters on driving business va...Diego Alberto Tamayo
The cognitive advantage
Cognitive computing is quickly emerging as a transformative technology that enables
organizations to gain business advantage. Also referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive
technology augments human expertise to unlock new intelligence from vast quantities of data and
to develop deep, predictive insights at scale. This shift to systems that can reason and learn is
especially germane to the bottom line; the cognitive era is here in large part because it makes
practical business sense.
While traditional banks contend with inflexible legacy IT systems, the transformational ones deploy Agile methods to significantly reduce their time to value and make the organization more flexible as a whole.
Transformation is difficult and digital transformation is even harder.
This document discusses how business intelligence (BI) tools have traditionally been too complex, costly and difficult for small to midsize companies to implement effectively. It introduces SAP Crystal solutions as an affordable and scalable alternative that provides modular reporting and analytics tools to improve real-time decision making for growing businesses. Key benefits of SAP Crystal solutions include simplified licensing, ease of use, flexibility to add data sources and scale with business growth, and a path to transition to more advanced enterprise solutions. The document provides examples of how small companies have successfully used SAP Crystal solutions to generate customized reports, dashboards and analytics.
In this presentation, we describe how a text analytics command center can help you create a strategy for analyzing & integrating both social & private data.
This document discusses visual discovery tools, which allow business users to interact with and manipulate data visually. It finds that around 50% of organizations have adopted these tools. Visual discovery provides benefits like faster insights, discovery of unknown relationships, and increased adoption of BI assets. However, challenges include potential bias in visualizations and information overload. The document surveys users on their experiences with and perceptions of visual discovery tools.
A guide to choosing an enterprise bot builder platformGina Shaw
Research says that 42% of companies plan to invest in Artificial Intelligence.
So your Enterprise need a chatbot??? This deck will help you to better understand the Enterprise Chatbots & Features you should look for when choosing a bot builder platform.
Entrepreneurship 101: Business Communication Tools with Veronika LitinskiMaRS Discovery District
This lecture presents tips, examples, techniques and tools for building the five essential communication documents for entrepreneurs including: The Elevator Pitch, Executive Summary, Company Presentation, Technical White Paper, and the Business Plan. Learn how to create these communication tools and how to use them effectively to grow your business from an idea to a funded business.
As more and more organizations move from recognizing that unstructured data exists, and remains untapped, the field of semantic technology and text analysis capabilities is
How Do I Get a Job in Data Science? | People Ask Googleprateek kumar
One of the most common questions that aspiring data scientists ask is – ‘how do I get a data science job?’ There are many professionals looking to transition to data science but don’t know how. Therefore, this blog explains how you can get a data science job.
What to Know Before Applying
I want to make one thing clear at the start – getting a data science job is not easy. Sure, there are scores of openings and many companies are looking to hire data scientists so that they can gain an edge over their competitors using data.
Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence Strategy: Developing a Trust-Focused...Leslie McFarlin
In order to create a vision for the development of machine learning and AI within CA Technologies' Design Organization, this presentation outlines a 3-part strategy for creating trust in ML/AI products the company develops.
How to successfully implement Business Intelligence into your organisation.
A completely agnostic and independent view from a market leader in delivering technology transformation.
Details on how to build a strategy to successfully execute on and more importantly how to get the business to adopt Business Intelligence into their day to day role.
Essential tool kit for any organisation looking to invest in Business Intelligence.
There are ten guidelines with a broad coverage, ranging from develop.pdfsudhirchourasia86
There are ten guidelines with a broad coverage, ranging from developing a strategic role for
information to the development of capabilities and the marketing of the information unit. There
is a considerable degree of overlap between these guidelines, since many of them support and
depend on each other. Mostly, they are guidelines for development, not maintaining the status
quo. Therefore it is essential that you should regularly devote at least 10% of your time to these
activities, and certainly more in the early stages.
1. Establishing the Strategic Role of Information
This is a two stage process: (1) a research and investigation phase that gives you the information
you need for (2) articulating your mission and strategy. The first phase requires an assessment of
the attitudes of senior management to information and how much they are willing to pay for it. I
recently asked the head of a market research unit how hard it was to justify their existence and
budget. He commented: \"that has not been a problem, ever since we spend hundreds of millions
of dollars on a new product and then lost market share to the Japanese\". This direct link between
a large strategic investment and the bottom line delivered a sharp lesson to senior management
on the value of competitor intelligence.
Some of the strategic decisions whose successful outcomes depend on the availability of good
information include:
Market selection and targeting
New investments
Location of factories and offices
New product development and launch
Pricing and Promotion
Find out how these decisions are made, what information is used, and from where it is sourced.
You may already have data from feedback on how the information you have supplied has helped
such processes (if not, you should get it!). Has your organisation recently had successes or
failures that could be directly attributed to good or bad information? From these investigations
you can determine areas of high information leverage where you could play a role. Identify the
linkages between information and results. This should then be a cornerstone of your strategy.
Use every opportunity to let people, especially senior managers, know about it.
2. Identify Users Real Needs
This is the first of the marketing guidelines. It is essentially about market research. Therefore use
the methods used by researchers - surveys, interviews, usage analysis. You already have users.
Find out how they use your output and again what results and benefits they achieve. One
particularly useful way of teasing this out (used, by the way, to justify office automation
systems) is to ask what would happen if you did not offer that service.
Getting to senior management users and non-users is an important strand of this activity. You
must also learn about their real needs, not the ones they may initially express. Some of these may
be psychological needs such as \"I want to impress our senior management team with the range
of authoritative information I have .
This document provides a comprehensive guide for selecting the right competitive intelligence (CI) software solution. It outlines an 11-step process for evaluating solutions, including defining objectives and requirements, identifying stakeholders, assessing technical requirements, data inputs and outputs, workflow, customization options, information access controls, analytics capabilities, seeing solutions demonstrated, and considering pricing. Going through each step is recommended to thoroughly understand needs and find a solution that closely matches existing processes to maximize user adoption and benefits.
This document discusses worst practices in business intelligence (BI) implementations. It identifies the top four worst practices as: 1) assuming BI tools can be used by average business users, 2) allowing Excel to become the default BI platform, 3) assuming a data warehouse will solve all information needs, and 4) selecting a BI tool without a specific business need in mind. The document provides details on each worst practice and recommends solutions to avoid BI failures and achieve success, such as using BI platforms and applications tailored for business users rather than complex BI tools.
Performance Support for Software Rollouts & Upgrades - The Business ProblemEpsilon Software
This slideshare is usually presented during our webinar and product demonstration sessions, and reflects our understanding of the business problem when it comes to information overload, end user adoption, business process guidance and performance support.
This document discusses the five worst practices in business intelligence (BI) implementations that can lead to poor results. It identifies these practices as: 1) depending on humans to operationalize insights, 2) expecting self-service BI to address all needs, 3) underestimating the importance of data preparation, 4) using tactical BI tools to support broad BI strategies, and 5) ignoring important data sources. The document provides details on the negative impacts of each practice and serves as a guide to avoiding common mistakes to ensure successful BI.
Software Development Better, Faster, Stronger with Feature PrioritizationMentorMate
A guide to save time and align your stakeholders
How can a group of stakeholders with different priorities agree which features of a product are the most important? The answer is feature prioritization.
How do I embrace it to deliver unique intelligenceDigimind
The document summarizes a presentation given by Dr. Sheila Wright on how she used the Digimind IT platform to develop competitor profiles with her students at De Montfort University. Some key points from the presentation:
1) Sheila emphasized thinking about the goal of the analysis and having a structured template focused on relevant information rather than just collecting more data.
2) She introduced frameworks for categorizing competitors and evaluating their strengths relative to critical success factors.
3) Flexibility is important in designing templates, as one size does not fit all industries or companies. Digimind worked with Sheila to customize their template.
4) IT is necessary to manage information overload and focus on priority needs, transforming data into
The document discusses researching client needs to provide appropriate IT support. It recommends conducting a needs analysis by examining a client's business processes, assessing which IT systems could improve operations, and understanding support needs. The process involves fostering relationships, analyzing current IT environments, identifying gaps, developing options, and suggesting solutions. It also discusses determining appropriate support levels, such as informal peer support, dedicated support positions, help desk support, or outsourcing. Support functions for a website may include maintaining content, database administration, version control, troubleshooting, customization, training and more.
Delivering Machine Learning Solutions by fmr Sears Dir of PMProduct School
Main takeaways:
- Key stages in the Data Science process
- Unique challenges ML products present
- Opportunities for Product Managers to make a big impact
The cognitive advantage insights from early adopters on driving business va...Diego Alberto Tamayo
The cognitive advantage
Cognitive computing is quickly emerging as a transformative technology that enables
organizations to gain business advantage. Also referred to as artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive
technology augments human expertise to unlock new intelligence from vast quantities of data and
to develop deep, predictive insights at scale. This shift to systems that can reason and learn is
especially germane to the bottom line; the cognitive era is here in large part because it makes
practical business sense.
While traditional banks contend with inflexible legacy IT systems, the transformational ones deploy Agile methods to significantly reduce their time to value and make the organization more flexible as a whole.
Transformation is difficult and digital transformation is even harder.
This document discusses how business intelligence (BI) tools have traditionally been too complex, costly and difficult for small to midsize companies to implement effectively. It introduces SAP Crystal solutions as an affordable and scalable alternative that provides modular reporting and analytics tools to improve real-time decision making for growing businesses. Key benefits of SAP Crystal solutions include simplified licensing, ease of use, flexibility to add data sources and scale with business growth, and a path to transition to more advanced enterprise solutions. The document provides examples of how small companies have successfully used SAP Crystal solutions to generate customized reports, dashboards and analytics.
In this presentation, we describe how a text analytics command center can help you create a strategy for analyzing & integrating both social & private data.
This document discusses visual discovery tools, which allow business users to interact with and manipulate data visually. It finds that around 50% of organizations have adopted these tools. Visual discovery provides benefits like faster insights, discovery of unknown relationships, and increased adoption of BI assets. However, challenges include potential bias in visualizations and information overload. The document surveys users on their experiences with and perceptions of visual discovery tools.
A guide to choosing an enterprise bot builder platformGina Shaw
Research says that 42% of companies plan to invest in Artificial Intelligence.
So your Enterprise need a chatbot??? This deck will help you to better understand the Enterprise Chatbots & Features you should look for when choosing a bot builder platform.
Entrepreneurship 101: Business Communication Tools with Veronika LitinskiMaRS Discovery District
This lecture presents tips, examples, techniques and tools for building the five essential communication documents for entrepreneurs including: The Elevator Pitch, Executive Summary, Company Presentation, Technical White Paper, and the Business Plan. Learn how to create these communication tools and how to use them effectively to grow your business from an idea to a funded business.
As more and more organizations move from recognizing that unstructured data exists, and remains untapped, the field of semantic technology and text analysis capabilities is
How Do I Get a Job in Data Science? | People Ask Googleprateek kumar
One of the most common questions that aspiring data scientists ask is – ‘how do I get a data science job?’ There are many professionals looking to transition to data science but don’t know how. Therefore, this blog explains how you can get a data science job.
What to Know Before Applying
I want to make one thing clear at the start – getting a data science job is not easy. Sure, there are scores of openings and many companies are looking to hire data scientists so that they can gain an edge over their competitors using data.
Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence Strategy: Developing a Trust-Focused...Leslie McFarlin
In order to create a vision for the development of machine learning and AI within CA Technologies' Design Organization, this presentation outlines a 3-part strategy for creating trust in ML/AI products the company develops.
How to successfully implement Business Intelligence into your organisation.
A completely agnostic and independent view from a market leader in delivering technology transformation.
Details on how to build a strategy to successfully execute on and more importantly how to get the business to adopt Business Intelligence into their day to day role.
Essential tool kit for any organisation looking to invest in Business Intelligence.
There are ten guidelines with a broad coverage, ranging from develop.pdfsudhirchourasia86
There are ten guidelines with a broad coverage, ranging from developing a strategic role for
information to the development of capabilities and the marketing of the information unit. There
is a considerable degree of overlap between these guidelines, since many of them support and
depend on each other. Mostly, they are guidelines for development, not maintaining the status
quo. Therefore it is essential that you should regularly devote at least 10% of your time to these
activities, and certainly more in the early stages.
1. Establishing the Strategic Role of Information
This is a two stage process: (1) a research and investigation phase that gives you the information
you need for (2) articulating your mission and strategy. The first phase requires an assessment of
the attitudes of senior management to information and how much they are willing to pay for it. I
recently asked the head of a market research unit how hard it was to justify their existence and
budget. He commented: \"that has not been a problem, ever since we spend hundreds of millions
of dollars on a new product and then lost market share to the Japanese\". This direct link between
a large strategic investment and the bottom line delivered a sharp lesson to senior management
on the value of competitor intelligence.
Some of the strategic decisions whose successful outcomes depend on the availability of good
information include:
Market selection and targeting
New investments
Location of factories and offices
New product development and launch
Pricing and Promotion
Find out how these decisions are made, what information is used, and from where it is sourced.
You may already have data from feedback on how the information you have supplied has helped
such processes (if not, you should get it!). Has your organisation recently had successes or
failures that could be directly attributed to good or bad information? From these investigations
you can determine areas of high information leverage where you could play a role. Identify the
linkages between information and results. This should then be a cornerstone of your strategy.
Use every opportunity to let people, especially senior managers, know about it.
2. Identify Users Real Needs
This is the first of the marketing guidelines. It is essentially about market research. Therefore use
the methods used by researchers - surveys, interviews, usage analysis. You already have users.
Find out how they use your output and again what results and benefits they achieve. One
particularly useful way of teasing this out (used, by the way, to justify office automation
systems) is to ask what would happen if you did not offer that service.
Getting to senior management users and non-users is an important strand of this activity. You
must also learn about their real needs, not the ones they may initially express. Some of these may
be psychological needs such as \"I want to impress our senior management team with the range
of authoritative information I have .
This document provides a comprehensive guide for selecting the right competitive intelligence (CI) software solution. It outlines an 11-step process for evaluating solutions, including defining objectives and requirements, identifying stakeholders, assessing technical requirements, data inputs and outputs, workflow, customization options, information access controls, analytics capabilities, seeing solutions demonstrated, and considering pricing. Going through each step is recommended to thoroughly understand needs and find a solution that closely matches existing processes to maximize user adoption and benefits.
This document discusses worst practices in business intelligence (BI) implementations. It identifies the top four worst practices as: 1) assuming BI tools can be used by average business users, 2) allowing Excel to become the default BI platform, 3) assuming a data warehouse will solve all information needs, and 4) selecting a BI tool without a specific business need in mind. The document provides details on each worst practice and recommends solutions to avoid BI failures and achieve success, such as using BI platforms and applications tailored for business users rather than complex BI tools.
Performance Support for Software Rollouts & Upgrades - The Business ProblemEpsilon Software
This slideshare is usually presented during our webinar and product demonstration sessions, and reflects our understanding of the business problem when it comes to information overload, end user adoption, business process guidance and performance support.
This document discusses the five worst practices in business intelligence (BI) implementations that can lead to poor results. It identifies these practices as: 1) depending on humans to operationalize insights, 2) expecting self-service BI to address all needs, 3) underestimating the importance of data preparation, 4) using tactical BI tools to support broad BI strategies, and 5) ignoring important data sources. The document provides details on the negative impacts of each practice and serves as a guide to avoiding common mistakes to ensure successful BI.
Software Development Better, Faster, Stronger with Feature PrioritizationMentorMate
A guide to save time and align your stakeholders
How can a group of stakeholders with different priorities agree which features of a product are the most important? The answer is feature prioritization.
How do I embrace it to deliver unique intelligenceDigimind
The document summarizes a presentation given by Dr. Sheila Wright on how she used the Digimind IT platform to develop competitor profiles with her students at De Montfort University. Some key points from the presentation:
1) Sheila emphasized thinking about the goal of the analysis and having a structured template focused on relevant information rather than just collecting more data.
2) She introduced frameworks for categorizing competitors and evaluating their strengths relative to critical success factors.
3) Flexibility is important in designing templates, as one size does not fit all industries or companies. Digimind worked with Sheila to customize their template.
4) IT is necessary to manage information overload and focus on priority needs, transforming data into
This document discusses tools for performing a training needs assessment, including observation, surveys, and focus groups/interviews. A needs assessment is important for understanding how training can help users meet business objectives. It provides information to define the audience, format, length, technical specifications, costs and purpose of the training program. Observation of users can provide insights into what training is needed. Surveys can collect data on training needs and measure ROI. Focus groups allow obtaining qualitative feedback to further shape effective training.
Social software lets employees connect and share in new ways, and can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your organization. But social technologies like microblogging, social networking, automated activity feeds, social spreadsheets, wikis, etc. are new to most organizations, and most IT departments don’t have experience with how to successfully implement them.
Success with social software involves a lot more than simply finding the product that best fits your needs. It involves framing the problem appropriately in the first place, defining your business goals, and choosing a rollout methodology designed to meet those goals. It involves selling your CFO, changing behavior across your organization, and more.
This paper is designed to help you learn from the mistakes of others before you, so you can avoid the common pitfalls of social software, and get fast business value.
This document is containing details about Business Analysis & Business Analyst the agendas are as below :
Introduction to Business Analysis
Scope of Business Analyst in IT & Non-IT Organizations
Require Skill Matrix & Prerequisites for Business Analyst
Business Analysis Methodology
Role Business Analyst in SDLC
Alternatives & BA Professional Courses
Introduction to CMMi Levels & Role of BA in CMMi Levels
7 Questions to Ask Your Prospective Outsourced Product Development Vendortrigentsoftware
This SlideShare on `7 Questions to Ask Your Prospective Outsourced Product Development Vendor' will help you narrow down your choices for selecting the best outsourcing partner for your product development
Top 5 Survey Data Analysis Software .pptxRepustate
Giving a voice to customers and employees begins with asking the right questions. An ideal survey should ensure that true opinions come through. That’s why questionnaires must have open-ended questions so that respondents freely express their opinions.
2016-09 Customer Insight Visualizations to Drive Business DecisionsPaul Santilli
The document discusses how data visualization techniques can help organizations quickly understand and act on customer insights data. As customer data volumes grow massively, visualizations provide efficient ways to interpret information and make fast decisions. Good visualizations communicate insights like customer sentiment, priorities, and performance over time in easy-to-understand formats. They allow companies to identify key areas to improve customer satisfaction without extensive data analysis. Effective visualizations tell a clear story, use simple and structured designs, and highlight important metrics and comparisons.
Business intelligence (BI) involves collecting data from various sources, analyzing it to gain insights, and presenting the findings to help make better business decisions. It aims to provide the right information to decision-makers at the right time. The document outlines the five stages of BI - collecting data, extracting and transforming it, loading it into a data warehouse, analyzing it, and presenting insights through dashboards, reports and alerts. It also provides examples of how a retail company uses BI tools to gain insights from customer and sales data to improve performance.
5 Tips to Bulletproof Your Analytics ImplementationObservePoint
Your digital properties—websites, mobile apps and more—are central to your business. And your customers spend an incredible 5.6 hours per day with digital media. With all of that data to collect—and the technology to pull reports instantly—marketers like you are now able to understand their customers like never before.
But is your web analytics implementation bulletproof?
In this newly released eBook, you will learn in five simple steps how to:
Produce data that you can trust
Use free debugging tools to spot-check your implementations
Avoid common mistakes in analytics validation
The document provides guidance on best practices for creating online surveys. It recommends that surveys have a clear objective, be short (under 10 minutes), use closed-ended questions for easy analysis of results, ask one question per topic, avoid biased or ambiguous wording, have a logical flow of questions, and be tested before widespread distribution. The document also provides tips on question order, required fields, and avoiding mutually exclusive answers. The overall aim is to collect useful data from respondents in the most efficient and effective way possible.
The document provides tips for successfully evaluating eDiscovery software demos. It recommends knowing your goals for the software, which team members will use it, any security boundaries, researching potential partners, preparing for demos, and conducting a proof of concept test. The key steps are to define the problems you hope to solve, understand your team's needs, set expectations for demos based on your requirements, bring the right stakeholders to demos, and thoroughly test the top solution.
Needs assessments can be applied to a variety of functions in the construction firm—from figuring
out what kind of technology the company requires to a service that could open your business up
to work in new construction markets to assessing an employee’s performance and what training
he could benefit from. Once you’ve decided that it’s time to conduct a needs analysis, you will be
working to determine exactly what your company has to do to drive improvements in its operations.
Learn more at the http://na.sage.com/sage-construction-and-real-estate
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4. The content marketing channel plan evaluates existing channels, required changes, and objectives/goals for each channel based on personas. Developing a strategy in these areas with a documented plan leads to
This document provides definitions and analyses for key Twitter metrics including engagement, retweets, mentions, favorites, hashtags, potential reach, potential impressions, and response rate and time. It discusses how to measure account engagement, audience, share of voice, and visual content effectiveness. It also explains how to optimize for site traffic, measure customer service, campaigns, and influence. The document aims to help readers understand Twitter analytics and how to use metrics to improve strategies and prove social media value.
This document outlines 10 social media truths for 2014. It discusses how social media has become an essential part of business and culture. 97% of marketers now use social media and over half have started in the last two years. The document emphasizes that social media is a conversation and brands need to carry themselves like normal people to build relationships. It also notes that audiences are now creators themselves and consume many types of user-generated content. The document recommends focusing social efforts on Facebook, YouTube and blogging. It stresses that good content that speaks to the brand voice and products is most important.
Five steps to creatinga strong social media strategyNuno Fraga Coelho
The document outlines five steps to creating a strong social media strategy: 1) understand your goals and objectives, 2) know your audience, 3) choose the right social media platforms, 4) create a content plan, and 5) measure results and adjust accordingly. The strategy recommends tailoring your social media presence to be relevant for your target audience and aligning your outreach goals with the appropriate platforms.
This document provides an overview of how marketing automation can help marketing and sales teams. It discusses how marketing automation can help CMOs maximize ROI, gain insights, decrease lead costs, and drive sales. Specifically, it outlines how marketing automation allows teams to automate tasks like email marketing, qualify leads, measure campaign performance, and close deals faster through features like lead nurturing and automated follow ups. The document contains several chapters that will explore these benefits in more detail.
The document discusses the ROI of marketing automation. It outlines how marketing automation can optimize marketing programs, increase conversion rates, and improve alignment between marketing and sales teams. Case studies are provided of companies that have achieved significant benefits from implementing marketing automation, such as doubling lead generation, reducing costs and improving revenue. Marketing automation allows companies to personalize messaging, qualify leads more effectively, and track performance throughout the sales process.
This document provides an overview of why small businesses should establish a social media presence and how to go about it effectively. Some key points:
- Social media usage is skyrocketing and many customers now search for local businesses on social platforms. Having an online and social presence can put small businesses ahead of the competition.
- Choosing one high-potential platform like Facebook or Twitter to start and focusing efforts there is recommended over spreading resources too thin across multiple networks. Localizing outreach on these platforms to the target community is emphasized.
- Developing a social media strategy including defining the target audience, finding followers through ads or local community engagement, and creating a regular posting schedule around relevant, shareable content is
The document discusses how LinkedIn has evolved into an important marketing channel for brands, providing unprecedented opportunities to market directly to professionals on the world's largest professional network. It outlines best practices for leveraging LinkedIn for marketing, including creating an engaging Company Page, growing your audience, using targeted ads to reach new segments, and engaging your existing LinkedIn community through regular posting of relevant content. Following these guidelines will help companies make the most of LinkedIn's new tools to build their brand and generate leads.
The document provides guidance on basic lead nurturing campaigns, including incoming lead processing campaigns and stay in touch campaigns. It discusses determining if leads are ready to engage with sales, establishing permission for nurturing leads, and welcoming new leads. It also covers categorizing leads into stages, sending new lead welcome campaigns, and developing a stay in touch campaign matrix to systematically nurture leads over time. The goal is to foster relationships with prospects, make a positive first impression, and generate more qualified leads for sales through relevant, helpful content.
Facebook content marketing involves posting different types of content like images, videos, text and links on a Facebook page. It is important to define the target audience and relevant content themes based on their interests and lifestyle. A content schedule should be created to post regularly at optimal times. Various post options on Facebook like status updates, photos, videos, offers and events can be used. Content about a company should focus on how it helps the audience. Facebook ads can promote content but the content itself must be engaging. Facebook insights provides metrics to analyze content performance and determine what content the audience engages with most. EdgeRank is Facebook's system for determining the reach of page posts based on factors like if a user interacted with the page before or
The document provides guidance on developing an effective social marketing strategy, outlining key considerations for goals, content, platforms, resources and governance. It emphasizes the importance of a solid foundation, including stakeholder buy-in, dedicated staff, and a focus on quality engagement over self-promotion. Various social media tactics are presented to incorporate social marketing throughout the customer journey.
The kiss (keep it s imple & smart) method to digital marketing successNuno Fraga Coelho
The document discusses adopting a "KISS" (Keep It Simple & Smart) approach to digital marketing. It argues that experts overcomplicate areas like SEO, social media marketing, and influencer outreach with excessive advice. The key is to focus on creating great content, which will naturally drive traffic, links, and engagement. For SEO, high-quality on-site content is more important than technical optimization tactics. For Facebook, posting engaging content will increase affinity and weight more than trying to "game" the algorithm. The document advocates keeping strategies simple rather than getting lost in complex details.
Esteban Kolsky outlines a five-step plan for businesses to implement a customer-to-business (C2B) model in response to the fundamental shift in how customers communicate and influence businesses through social media. The old "inside-out" model of businesses controlling messaging is being replaced by an "outside-in" model where customers communicate among themselves more quickly than businesses can internally. The five steps are: 1) establish clear social media governance and ownership, 2) cross-pollinate social insights across business functions, 3) create a single source of social data, 4) build a social media P&L, and 5) engage customers to co-create and co-market virally. Implementing C
This document provides summaries of various social media tools, including:
- Mention, which allows users to monitor brands and keywords across the web and social media.
- LikeAlyzer, a free tool that assesses Facebook pages and provides suggestions for improvement.
- Social Crawlytics, a free tool that identifies competitors' most shared content on social media.
- Agorapulse, HootSuite, ViralTag, Buffer, Nimble, and Dlvr.it, which are various social media management and analytics tools.
- A section with 101 tips for social media marketing across various platforms and activities.
The document outlines 5 ways that marketing will change in the next 5 years: 1) Massive data collection across multiple touchpoints will become standard as more data is collected on users, 2) Marketers will gain better control and access to user data to personalize experiences, 3) Social media will grow into a key source of user data and insights, 4) Permission-based marketing will become essential to maintain user privacy and trust, 5) Programmatic marketing will end generalized outreach by targeting users with highly personalized content based on their profiles and behaviors. The key will be for marketers to leverage big data, understand users, and respect their privacy.
This document is an eBook from Spredfast that explores elements of great social programs. It features articles from 12 leading brand strategists and visionaries on topics like driving customer loyalty through social media, creating engaging content, and incorporating social strategies into sales and marketing efforts. The contributors include experts from brands like Whole Foods, U.S. Cellular, Caterpillar, and HomeAway. The goal is to address common questions facing brands about expanding their social media presence and measuring the success of their programs.
Introduction to integrated marketing sales and marketing alignmentNuno Fraga Coelho
This document discusses the importance of alignment between sales and marketing teams. It provides 7 steps to achieve alignment:
1. Get sales and marketing to agree on buyer profiles and prospect traits.
2. Develop an integrated content strategy by auditing current assets and ensuring content meets buyer needs.
3. Agree on common metrics and definitions like what qualifies a "sales ready" lead to ensure both teams are measuring the same things.
4. Establish SLAs that set targets for lead generation and handoff between teams to increase accountability.
5. Create a clear process for handing off leads from marketing to sales and feedback loops.
6. Develop a shared sales/marketing pipeline for increased visibility
Marketers' main concern is maintaining high levels of engagement with social media audiences. A survey found that 42.2% of respondents said social media increases engagement. The top brands manage their social media presence across multiple networks, using an average of 4 networks each. These brands are more likely to create distinct social initiatives for each of their brands and report being more satisfied with their social media efforts. Engagement is a key priority for brands using social media to drive interactions across their various brand and media offerings.
This document analyzes email marketing metrics and benchmarks from Q1-Q4 2012 for 2,787 brands. It finds that open rates, click-through rates, message sizes, and churn metrics like bounce rates, unsubscribes, and spam complaints vary significantly between top-performing and bottom-performing email marketers as well as between different industries and global regions. The document emphasizes that benchmarks should be used to compare performance to goals and improve email programs, rather than just meeting averages. It also notes additional metrics like revenue and leads generated are important to measure success against business objectives.
The document provides tips for writing effective marketing services contracts. It recommends structuring contracts concisely with 2-3 pages, making contracts visually appealing, responding to client requests quickly, including relevant examples from past projects, and offering different pricing packages to allow for upselling. The overall goal is to create a reusable contract template that can be easily customized for prospects.
Have you ever been confused by the myriad of choices offered by AWS for hosting a website or an API?
Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, Lightsail, Amplify, S3 (and more!) can each host websites + APIs. But which one should we choose?
Which one is cheapest? Which one is fastest? Which one will scale to meet our needs?
Join me in this session as we dive into each AWS hosting service to determine which one is best for your scenario and explain why!
HCL Notes und Domino Lizenzkostenreduzierung in der Welt von DLAUpanagenda
Webinar Recording: https://www.panagenda.com/webinars/hcl-notes-und-domino-lizenzkostenreduzierung-in-der-welt-von-dlau/
DLAU und die Lizenzen nach dem CCB- und CCX-Modell sind für viele in der HCL-Community seit letztem Jahr ein heißes Thema. Als Notes- oder Domino-Kunde haben Sie vielleicht mit unerwartet hohen Benutzerzahlen und Lizenzgebühren zu kämpfen. Sie fragen sich vielleicht, wie diese neue Art der Lizenzierung funktioniert und welchen Nutzen sie Ihnen bringt. Vor allem wollen Sie sicherlich Ihr Budget einhalten und Kosten sparen, wo immer möglich. Das verstehen wir und wir möchten Ihnen dabei helfen!
Wir erklären Ihnen, wie Sie häufige Konfigurationsprobleme lösen können, die dazu führen können, dass mehr Benutzer gezählt werden als nötig, und wie Sie überflüssige oder ungenutzte Konten identifizieren und entfernen können, um Geld zu sparen. Es gibt auch einige Ansätze, die zu unnötigen Ausgaben führen können, z. B. wenn ein Personendokument anstelle eines Mail-Ins für geteilte Mailboxen verwendet wird. Wir zeigen Ihnen solche Fälle und deren Lösungen. Und natürlich erklären wir Ihnen das neue Lizenzmodell.
Nehmen Sie an diesem Webinar teil, bei dem HCL-Ambassador Marc Thomas und Gastredner Franz Walder Ihnen diese neue Welt näherbringen. Es vermittelt Ihnen die Tools und das Know-how, um den Überblick zu bewahren. Sie werden in der Lage sein, Ihre Kosten durch eine optimierte Domino-Konfiguration zu reduzieren und auch in Zukunft gering zu halten.
Diese Themen werden behandelt
- Reduzierung der Lizenzkosten durch Auffinden und Beheben von Fehlkonfigurationen und überflüssigen Konten
- Wie funktionieren CCB- und CCX-Lizenzen wirklich?
- Verstehen des DLAU-Tools und wie man es am besten nutzt
- Tipps für häufige Problembereiche, wie z. B. Team-Postfächer, Funktions-/Testbenutzer usw.
- Praxisbeispiele und Best Practices zum sofortigen Umsetzen
Programming Foundation Models with DSPy - Meetup SlidesZilliz
Prompting language models is hard, while programming language models is easy. In this talk, I will discuss the state-of-the-art framework DSPy for programming foundation models with its powerful optimizers and runtime constraint system.
Digital Banking in the Cloud: How Citizens Bank Unlocked Their MainframePrecisely
Inconsistent user experience and siloed data, high costs, and changing customer expectations – Citizens Bank was experiencing these challenges while it was attempting to deliver a superior digital banking experience for its clients. Its core banking applications run on the mainframe and Citizens was using legacy utilities to get the critical mainframe data to feed customer-facing channels, like call centers, web, and mobile. Ultimately, this led to higher operating costs (MIPS), delayed response times, and longer time to market.
Ever-changing customer expectations demand more modern digital experiences, and the bank needed to find a solution that could provide real-time data to its customer channels with low latency and operating costs. Join this session to learn how Citizens is leveraging Precisely to replicate mainframe data to its customer channels and deliver on their “modern digital bank” experiences.
A Comprehensive Guide to DeFi Development Services in 2024Intelisync
DeFi represents a paradigm shift in the financial industry. Instead of relying on traditional, centralized institutions like banks, DeFi leverages blockchain technology to create a decentralized network of financial services. This means that financial transactions can occur directly between parties, without intermediaries, using smart contracts on platforms like Ethereum.
In 2024, we are witnessing an explosion of new DeFi projects and protocols, each pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in finance.
In summary, DeFi in 2024 is not just a trend; it’s a revolution that democratizes finance, enhances security and transparency, and fosters continuous innovation. As we proceed through this presentation, we'll explore the various components and services of DeFi in detail, shedding light on how they are transforming the financial landscape.
At Intelisync, we specialize in providing comprehensive DeFi development services tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. From smart contract development to dApp creation and security audits, we ensure that your DeFi project is built with innovation, security, and scalability in mind. Trust Intelisync to guide you through the intricate landscape of decentralized finance and unlock the full potential of blockchain technology.
Ready to take your DeFi project to the next level? Partner with Intelisync for expert DeFi development services today!
Let's Integrate MuleSoft RPA, COMPOSER, APM with AWS IDP along with Slackshyamraj55
Discover the seamless integration of RPA (Robotic Process Automation), COMPOSER, and APM with AWS IDP enhanced with Slack notifications. Explore how these technologies converge to streamline workflows, optimize performance, and ensure secure access, all while leveraging the power of AWS IDP and real-time communication via Slack notifications.
zkStudyClub - LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Application...Alex Pruden
Folding is a recent technique for building efficient recursive SNARKs. Several elegant folding protocols have been proposed, such as Nova, Supernova, Hypernova, Protostar, and others. However, all of them rely on an additively homomorphic commitment scheme based on discrete log, and are therefore not post-quantum secure. In this work we present LatticeFold, the first lattice-based folding protocol based on the Module SIS problem. This folding protocol naturally leads to an efficient recursive lattice-based SNARK and an efficient PCD scheme. LatticeFold supports folding low-degree relations, such as R1CS, as well as high-degree relations, such as CCS. The key challenge is to construct a secure folding protocol that works with the Ajtai commitment scheme. The difficulty, is ensuring that extracted witnesses are low norm through many rounds of folding. We present a novel technique using the sumcheck protocol to ensure that extracted witnesses are always low norm no matter how many rounds of folding are used. Our evaluation of the final proof system suggests that it is as performant as Hypernova, while providing post-quantum security.
Paper Link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/257
Digital Marketing Trends in 2024 | Guide for Staying AheadWask
https://www.wask.co/ebooks/digital-marketing-trends-in-2024
Feeling lost in the digital marketing whirlwind of 2024? Technology is changing, consumer habits are evolving, and staying ahead of the curve feels like a never-ending pursuit. This e-book is your compass. Dive into actionable insights to handle the complexities of modern marketing. From hyper-personalization to the power of user-generated content, learn how to build long-term relationships with your audience and unlock the secrets to success in the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift.pdfTosin Akinosho
Monitoring and Managing Anomaly Detection on OpenShift
Overview
Dive into the world of anomaly detection on edge devices with our comprehensive hands-on tutorial. This SlideShare presentation will guide you through the entire process, from data collection and model training to edge deployment and real-time monitoring. Perfect for those looking to implement robust anomaly detection systems on resource-constrained IoT/edge devices.
Key Topics Covered
1. Introduction to Anomaly Detection
- Understand the fundamentals of anomaly detection and its importance in identifying unusual behavior or failures in systems.
2. Understanding Edge (IoT)
- Learn about edge computing and IoT, and how they enable real-time data processing and decision-making at the source.
3. What is ArgoCD?
- Discover ArgoCD, a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes, and its role in deploying applications on edge devices.
4. Deployment Using ArgoCD for Edge Devices
- Step-by-step guide on deploying anomaly detection models on edge devices using ArgoCD.
5. Introduction to Apache Kafka and S3
- Explore Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming and Amazon S3 for scalable storage solutions.
6. Viewing Kafka Messages in the Data Lake
- Learn how to view and analyze Kafka messages stored in a data lake for better insights.
7. What is Prometheus?
- Get to know Prometheus, an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit, and its application in monitoring edge devices.
8. Monitoring Application Metrics with Prometheus
- Detailed instructions on setting up Prometheus to monitor the performance and health of your anomaly detection system.
9. What is Camel K?
- Introduction to Camel K, a lightweight integration framework built on Apache Camel, designed for Kubernetes.
10. Configuring Camel K Integrations for Data Pipelines
- Learn how to configure Camel K for seamless data pipeline integrations in your anomaly detection workflow.
11. What is a Jupyter Notebook?
- Overview of Jupyter Notebooks, an open-source web application for creating and sharing documents with live code, equations, visualizations, and narrative text.
12. Jupyter Notebooks with Code Examples
- Hands-on examples and code snippets in Jupyter Notebooks to help you implement and test anomaly detection models.
This presentation provides valuable insights into effective cost-saving techniques on AWS. Learn how to optimize your AWS resources by rightsizing, increasing elasticity, picking the right storage class, and choosing the best pricing model. Additionally, discover essential governance mechanisms to ensure continuous cost efficiency. Whether you are new to AWS or an experienced user, this presentation provides clear and practical tips to help you reduce your cloud costs and get the most out of your budget.
Generating privacy-protected synthetic data using Secludy and MilvusZilliz
During this demo, the founders of Secludy will demonstrate how their system utilizes Milvus to store and manipulate embeddings for generating privacy-protected synthetic data. Their approach not only maintains the confidentiality of the original data but also enhances the utility and scalability of LLMs under privacy constraints. Attendees, including machine learning engineers, data scientists, and data managers, will witness first-hand how Secludy's integration with Milvus empowers organizations to harness the power of LLMs securely and efficiently.
HCL Notes and Domino License Cost Reduction in the World of DLAUpanagenda
Webinar Recording: https://www.panagenda.com/webinars/hcl-notes-and-domino-license-cost-reduction-in-the-world-of-dlau/
The introduction of DLAU and the CCB & CCX licensing model caused quite a stir in the HCL community. As a Notes and Domino customer, you may have faced challenges with unexpected user counts and license costs. You probably have questions on how this new licensing approach works and how to benefit from it. Most importantly, you likely have budget constraints and want to save money where possible. Don’t worry, we can help with all of this!
We’ll show you how to fix common misconfigurations that cause higher-than-expected user counts, and how to identify accounts which you can deactivate to save money. There are also frequent patterns that can cause unnecessary cost, like using a person document instead of a mail-in for shared mailboxes. We’ll provide examples and solutions for those as well. And naturally we’ll explain the new licensing model.
Join HCL Ambassador Marc Thomas in this webinar with a special guest appearance from Franz Walder. It will give you the tools and know-how to stay on top of what is going on with Domino licensing. You will be able lower your cost through an optimized configuration and keep it low going forward.
These topics will be covered
- Reducing license cost by finding and fixing misconfigurations and superfluous accounts
- How do CCB and CCX licenses really work?
- Understanding the DLAU tool and how to best utilize it
- Tips for common problem areas, like team mailboxes, functional/test users, etc
- Practical examples and best practices to implement right away
How to Interpret Trends in the Kalyan Rajdhani Mix Chart.pdfChart Kalyan
A Mix Chart displays historical data of numbers in a graphical or tabular form. The Kalyan Rajdhani Mix Chart specifically shows the results of a sequence of numbers over different periods.
Salesforce Integration for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions A...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on integration of Salesforce with Bonterra Impact Management.
Interested in deploying an integration with Salesforce for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing.pdfssuserfac0301
Read Taking AI to the Next Level in Manufacturing to gain insights on AI adoption in the manufacturing industry, such as:
1. How quickly AI is being implemented in manufacturing.
2. Which barriers stand in the way of AI adoption.
3. How data quality and governance form the backbone of AI.
4. Organizational processes and structures that may inhibit effective AI adoption.
6. Ideas and approaches to help build your organization's AI strategy.
Five things you need to know about your users before you deploy business intelligence
1. Five Things You Need to Know
About Your Users Before You Deploy
Business Intelligence
A White Paper
By Kevin Quinn
2. Kevin Quinn Bringing more than 25 years of software marketing and implementation
experience to his role as Vice President of Product Marketing for Information
Builders, Kevin Quinn oversees the development of marketing for all
product lines.
Mr. Quinn has been credited with helping to define business intelligence
end-user categories through his creation of guidelines for using and
employing business intelligence tools. He has helped companies worldwide
develop information deployment strategies that help accelerate decisions
and improve corporate performance. His efforts in this position have helped
propel Information Builders WebFOCUS and iWay Software solutions to
category leadership in their respective areas. Kevin is also the founder of
Statswizard.Com, an interactive sports statistics Web site that leverages
business intelligence functionality.
Mr. Quinn holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from
Queens College in Flushing, New York.
3. Table of Contents
1 Executive Summary
2 Understanding the Questions
2 A Closer Look at the Five Questions
9 The Question That Wasn’t Asked
10 The Importance of a Blended Approach to BI Deployment
11 Combining Components
15 Conclusion
4. Executive Summary
Have you ever deployed a solution or a capability in response to constant end user demand, only
to have it ignored once it was delivered? You gave them what they asked for, so why aren’t they
using it?
The answer is quite simple. What they say and what they mean are two different things.
Let’s look at an example of how this phenomenon occurs. A smart IT professional will ask
end users about their requirements, before embarking on the implementation of a business
intelligence (BI) application. They will ask questions such as: “What information do you need?”
and “How do you want it formatted?”. The varying answers they receive seem to indicate that
what users really need is flexibility. People will also often say that they need to be able to ask ad
hoc questions, because the type of information they require is constantly changing. So, the IT
professional interprets these requests for ad hoc and flexibility as a need for a business intelligence
tool and a data warehouse.
However, anyone with extensive experience in business intelligence will tell you that 95 percent of
your users have neither the time nor the skill to use a BI tool. In other words, their answers and the
IT professional’s interpretation of them are wrong!
This scenario may seem a bit extreme. But the truth is that users often unknowingly provide
incorrect information when expressing their reporting needs. Then, IT mistakenly assumes that
users know what they mean when they ask for things like an ad hoc tool.
In our years of experience working with companies of all types and sizes to design and deploy
business intelligence systems, we’ve learned that there are five key things you need to know about
your users before you roll out related technologies to them. In many cases, discovering these five
things will require more than just polling end users. To provide the right business intelligence
capabilities to the right people, you will need to find the answers to a few important questions,
and/or gather additional information from knowledgeable managers within your company.
In this paper, we will discuss these five things, as well as their implications. Additionally, we will
recommend effective ways to answer questions pertaining to your planned business intelligence
environment. Those answers will help you determine the most appropriate form of deployment,
so you can ensure widespread adoption and maximum user satisfaction.
1 Information Builders
5. Understanding the Things
Below is the list of the 5 things you need to know before you begin planning your application, so
you can better understand the blend of capabilities needed to address end user requirements.
1. What is the technical skill level and sophistication of the user(s)?
2. How much time can they spend finding, accessing, and analyzing information?
3. What types of questions will they be asking? [Note: the answer to this question will require
in-depth investigation, since it differs greatly from “What kind of information do you need?”
4. How often are the users traveling (or how often are they in the office)?
5. How timely must the data they are accessing be?
Correctly answering these five questions will provide you with a foundation for mapping out the
right mix of functionality necessary to meet user needs and optimize application utilization.
A Closer Look at the Five Questions
1. What is the technical skill level and sophistication of the users(s)?
This question should not be posed directly to your users. Many end users have a skewed
perception of their level of expertise and most consider themselves savvier than they are. Some
may view themselves as advanced users simply because they once bought a book on Amazon
or participated in an auction on eBay. The truth is, neither of these experiences classifies one as
technically advanced.
What does it really mean to be technically advanced? From a business intelligence standpoint,
there are several requirements for this category. Some users can easily interpret numbers and
percentages. They gobble up statistics like candy. This alone does not make them technically
advanced; it simply makes them curious. But if they are also technically astute, they will be
able to apply that skill to effectively using a business intelligence tool. As a rule, if someone is
comfortable with Excel’s features, such as creating formulas and sorting data, and they can easily
interpret numbers (as described above), they are probably also capable of employing a business
intelligence solution, such as an ad hoc query tool.
On average only about 10 to 15 percent of any audience of users is actually technically advanced.
Of those people, most don’t have the time to put their advanced skills to work – leading us to the
next question, which is closely related to this one.
2. How much time can they spend finding, accessing, and analyzing information?
This critical question, arguably the most important of the five, is often completely neglected. Yet
if it is answered realistically, an accurate plan for deployment can be formulated, even without
responses to the other four questions.
The truth is, in a typical organization, most people need to access information, but very few of
them have a lot of time to do it. If your users don’t have a lot of time to spend finding, accessing,
and analyzing information, then they don’t require a business intelligence tool.
2 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
6. How much time someone has to devote to reporting is often related to their role in the
organization. For example, executives may have very little time to spend analyzing data, while
analysts will have much more time, as analysis is their main job function.
3. What types of questions will they be asking?
Have you ever really thought about the questions that people ask? Can they be categorized?
If so, how?
Different types of questions are best asked and answered by different types of solutions.
Performance management, dashboards, and scorecards are about monitoring the status of a key
metric. While ad hoc query tools are ideal for asking random or on-the-fly questions.
The following categories describe the various kinds of solutions available and highlight the types
of questions that each is best for answering:
Status
Status is measured regularly. Users know this measure exists and where to get the data related to
it. Therefore, you want to make it easy for them to access through pre-built reports or dashboards.
Common deployment methods: reports, dashboards, and scorecards.
3 Information Builders
7. Ad Hoc/Investigative
A variation of status is where a measure or related data is required, but is not readily available
through a pre-defined dashboard or report. This is known as an “ad hoc question.” It is
investigative, meaning that some knowledge or curiosity has sparked the user’s interest. He or she
knows that the answer exists in the data, but does not have a way to retrieve it automatically. This
type of question is one of the most challenging, because it can be asked and answered in multiple
ways, but each way may or may not be practical, depending on the sophistication of the user
asking the question.
A business intelligence tool like ad hoc query can certainly solve the problem, but not all users
have the skill or the time needed to use such a solution. An alternative approach is called “guided
ad hoc,” which is comprised of one or more parameterized report templates. These templates
allow a user to customize a pre-existing report as a means of answering an ad hoc question.
Different business intelligence products have varying degrees of guided ad hoc capabilities.
Those tools that enable a developer to parameterize columns (e.g. sort groups and/or measures)
are best suited for quickly and easily posing ad hoc questions. At Information Builders, we prefer
this method, because it is intuitive enough for users at all skill levels to rapidly answer ad hoc
questions.
Common deployment methods: guided ad hoc, ad hoc query, and reporting.
4 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
8. Discovery/Search
Sometimes, users are unsure or unaware of the existence of something (e.g. a product or a
customer), and will need to explore or discover data to find the right information. The question
they are asking is, “Does XXX exist, and where I can find it?” which is a much more common
question than you think. It is asked countless times every day through search engines such as
Google. Even in corporate scenarios, this question is best answered with a search-style interface.
Users type in a word or phrase to see if there are any matches within the databases or applications
that reside across a company.
This is a very useful tool for many business professionals, particularly customer support staff. In
addition to search functionality, it’s the type of question that can often be answered with a few
drill downs within a pre-built report or dashboard. This approach, however, will only work if the
drill down crosses paths with the target of your inquiry. The point is that, with a blended approach
to building your business intelligence application, you can provide users with more than one
means of finding the answers they need.
Common deployment methods: search and/or investigative drill down.
5 Information Builders
9. Show Me What’s Interesting
This is one of the more unusual questions, and is typically posed by the curious people described
earlier. Often it is the responsibility of an analyst to find small issues before they become big
problems. Users will say, “Look at this data set and tell me what I should be concerned about.”
They want the analyst to point out what is unusual, so they can begin to ask more educated ad
hoc questions. These inquiries are best answered by visualization software that presents large or
complex sets of information in a more intuitive, graphical way. This makes it much easier – and
much faster – to identify patterns and trends, and understand what is out of the ordinary (also
known as outliers).
Common deployment method: data visualization.
6 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
10. Predict (What Should I Expect?)
In the past, predictive analytics were reserved for statisticians. But this analysis method is
becoming more popular as business intelligence vendors find better ways to embed it in
operational applications. When the two technologies are effectively combined, predictions can be
applied to nearly all other forms of information delivery. They can be incorporated into dashboards
or reports, or customized via guided ad hoc interfaces.
While the creation of a predictive model still requires the assistance of a specialist, the results of
those efforts can become part of any frontline processes. Universities are using predictions to
choose likely graduates from a sea of applicants. Police departments are using them to understand
where best to deploy their officers to deter crime. And insurance companies have been using
them for decades to adjust insurance rates for different risk categories.
Common deployment method: predictive analytics embedded in business intelligence
applications.
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11. 4. How often are the users traveling (or how often are they in the office)?
The ubiquitous availability of an Internet connection is having a profound impact on this
question’s importance. Historically, for frontline workers like sales reps and truck drivers, the only
connection back to the home office was though mobile phones. Today, police officers and truck
drivers ride the streets with laptops by their side, connected via satellite to the Internet. Or, more
likely, they are linked back to the information systems at home base through a BlackBerry, iPhone,
or other smartphone.
These tools are not the best or most common way to deploy business intelligence, such as ad
hoc query, advanced visualization, or OLAP analysis. Workers who spend a significant amount of
time – half or more – at remote or off-site locations are limited in the types of business intelligence
deployments with which they can interact.
5. How timely must the data they are accessing be?
Finally, your BI deployment will be influenced by the required latency of the data involved.
Business intelligence has three possible levels of latency – scheduled update, on demand, and real
time.
Scheduled update means that the information does not have to be up-to-the-minute. The data
source could be updated on a scheduled basis, such as once a day or each hour. Or, the data
can be near real time, updated incrementally within minutes of a transaction. The majority of BI
deployments work well with some form of a scheduled update.
On demand means that the user will require direct access to operational data or information
contained in a near real-time data warehouse. While this does not necessarily affect the BI
deployment itself, it is very uncommon for BI tools to give users access to operational systems,
because operational data is usually not stored in a form that is conducive to creating ad hoc
queries. However, dashboards, reports, and guided ad hoc reports are highly effective business
intelligence deployment methods when on demand access is required.
Finally, true real-time data is only needed to support the monitoring of frontline operational
processes. True real time means that the information being displayed is updated as a business
event occurs – even before the related data makes its way into a database. Only dashboards and
8 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
12. reports enable the dynamic display and update of information as business events take place.
Ad hoc query, guided ad hoc, and search are all tools that require a user to initiate information
retrieval, which is not true real time because there is always a certain delay, no matter how small,
between the event and the access of the related data.
The Question That Wasn’t Asked
In theory, this paper could have included a sixth question: “What role does the user play within the
organization?”. We alluded to this within the first section when we discussed users’ technical skills.
It was also touched on to some degree as we highlighted some of the others.
Understanding a user’s role gives you a certain perspective when it comes to their BI needs. For
example, executives look primarily for the high-level status of a key performance indicator (KPI),
while analysts will often spend their day analyzing data in great detail. A frontline worker, such as a
customer service rep, often searches for information to solve a specific problem. While there may
be some variations to roles and related needs from one organization to the next, understanding
the idiosyncrasies of the various users in your particular company will help you create a more
accurate profile of user requirements.
These three user types – the executive, the analyst, and the frontline worker – all require different
interfaces, which will become more apparent as we move on. The executive may find that high-
level status is best viewed through a dashboard. Analysts may require a more powerful tool that
allows them to manipulate and combine data in an unlimited number of ways to satisfy their
unique analysis needs. The frontline worker may best be serviced through a Google-like search
interface.
So, why did we leave the sixth question out? Because the profile of users based on their role, is
typically established by the answers to the other five questions.
9 Information Builders
13. The Importance of a Blended Approach to BI Deployment
Have you ever tried to hammer a nail into a wall with the end of a screwdriver or wrench, simply
because a hammer wasn’t within reach? It might work, although it may take far more time than
it would have if you had used the proper tool. Or, it may cause damage, making the task at hand
much harder and requiring you to go find the hammer anyway. The point is that using the proper
tool for a specific job is the only way to ensure efficient completion and the desired results.
The same is true when it comes to delivering business intelligence. Successful BI is something you
achieve by blending the right set of tools, access methods, and presentation, so information is not
only retrievable, but also easily understood.
The problem for many organizations is that trade journalists, analysts, bloggers, and other industry
pundits tend to hype the flashiest and most current technologies. In doing so, they can skew our
instincts and cause us to select the wrong tool for certain types of reporting requirements.
Business intelligence software comes in many forms, each offering a combination of four
components – access vehicles, query modes, presentation options, and output formats.
1. Access vehicles – An access vehicle is what will be used to retrieve or receive information, such
as a Web browser on a desktop, laptop, or smartphone, or an e-mail application, such as Outlook.
2. Query method – The query method is the Web-based software that will be used, such as:
a) A search interface (Google, Yahoo, etc.)
b) A Web form (a BI parameter form)
c) A BI tool (ad hoc query, reporting, or OLAP)
3. Presentation – Information will be viewed in formats, such as:
a) Tabular reports, which typically include summarized information in a finely laid-out table,
with subtotals, calculations, etc.
b) Charts, such as bar charts, pie charts, scatterplots, etc.
c) Dashboards, which combine reports and charts to show a high-level view of multiple
performance metrics and other indicators
d) Visualization, an abstract way of using maps, geographic shapes, colors, and other graphical
elements to represent data in a more meaningful and intuitive way than simple reports
and charts. Advanced visulization allows you to expose relationships and outliers in large
amounts of data that may be difficult to see otherwise
4. Output formats – Over the years, output formats have been created and supported by every
software vendor. The most popular solutions provide a way to view, interact with, print, and share
information in formats like Microsoft Excel, Adobe PDF, Adobe Flash, HTML, Microsoft PowerPoint,
or Microsoft Word. Each format provides different benefits, depending on the culture of the
company and the needs of the users. It is particularly valuable when BI software supports all of
these, enabling users to switch between formats as needed.
10 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
14. Combining Components
With a flexible business intelligence platform, you can use the four components in any
combination, creating a BI application that suits the needs of each and every one of your users.
Each component provides particular advantages when it comes to solving certain types of
challenges, but none are necessarily ideal for addressing all possible challenges. Think back to the
example of the screwdriver. While it is not the best tool for hammering a nail, it is the perfect one
for tightening a screw.
Let’s look at a few more scenarios.
For a non-technical user who has very little time to spend accessing information, but needs to
continuously monitor the status of key performance indicators, it might be best to send them a
simple report, chart, or dashboard via e-mail as an HTML or PDF attachment. Or, you can allow
them to logon to the BI system through a browser on their desktop, laptop, or smartphone to
view the live report or dashboard online in any format they choose.
For non-technical analysts trying to uncover the reason behind a dip in margins for the third
quarter, an online interactive visulization dashboard might suit their purposes perfectly.
For non-technical frontline customer support representatives trying to research a billing issue for
a customer, a search interface or a parameter form will allow them to investigate and interrogate
multiple data sources to uncover and fix the problem.
Access Tools Query Presentation Format
Powerpoint
Desktop/ E-mail
Laptop BI Tool
Report/
Chart Word
Web Form
Excel
Phone Browser Search
Search Dashboard HTML
PDF
Flash
Visualization Active Report
The above diagram depicts a simplified view of how the four components can be used in various
combinations to create a BI application.
Using the tools on the following pages to profile your users will help you to precisely determine,
which combination(s) will best satisfy their needs.
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15. Describe the User
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Tools to Help You Plan Your BI Application
The above grid represents the five questions discussed earlier. Simply fill in the appropriate circles as
you begin to answer the questions about your user(s). Most of the columns allow for only one choice
to be selected, with the exception of column four, “Types of Questions,” which will allow for multiple
responses. Please note that this is only a template. It can be modified or customized (e.g. by adding
more choices or changing the phrasing of certain options) to address your specific needs.
The grid below will help you marry certain user profiles with the appropriate business intelligence
deployments. Note that the technology column on the left does not map directly to the
component chart we saw earlier. Each technology listed represents a combination of one or more
of the components previously highlighted. For example, e-mail is listed as a technology that is
appropriate for a certain type of user profile, but the grid does not specify what is being e-mailed
(a report, dashboard, or visualization). It also does not distinguish between delivery formats (e.g.
PowerPoint, PDF, Excel). Those decisions must be left to you, the system designer.
Sample Profile
12 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
16. Types of BI Deployment
Good Match Fair Match Poor Match
The BI deployments in the grid above are described in more detail below. The circles show which
technology best maps to a particular profile. The completely shaded circle is the best match, the
unshaded circle is the worst. If you have a BI platform that is flexible enough to do each of these,
you will be able to build the exact BI application your users need. Otherwise, you may find your
users trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver, so to speak.
E-mail – Delivery of a report or dashboard (in any format) to a user’s e-mail, whether on their
desktop or smartphone.
Search – A search interface that retrieves detailed results about records in any database across
your organization, as well as existing reports or dashboards, based on a key word or phrase.
Dashboard – Information pages with multiple components showing the status of one or more
measures.
■ Performance Dashboard – Typically displays the status of key performance indicators. It can be
viewed online or e-mailed to a user.
■ Real-time Dashboard – Similar to a performance dashboard (only the status of key measures
are presented in real time) with constant updates made as business events occur. Therefore, it
requires that the user view it online.
■ Visualization Dashboard – Visualization is an abstract way of using maps, geographic shapes,
colors, and other graphical elements to represent large amounts of data in a more meaningful
13 Information Builders
17. and intuitive way. Visulization dashboards are interactive environments used by analysts to more
easily uncover relationships and outliers that are difficult to see on standard reports or charts.
Guided Ad Hoc Form – A Web-based application component that lets a user customize a report,
chart, or dashboard by selecting options from prompts. It is the simplest way to empower a non-
technical user to ask ad hoc questions.
BI Tool – Ad hoc query, reporting, and analysis tools allow advanced users to pose nearly any
question. Data can even be combined from multiple sources to uncover unique observations.
Your final result will be to create a chart that gives you a profile of your users’ needs. The chart will
show you the types of technologies that need to be blended into your application and how much
of each is needed. Below is a diagram showing some common profiles for different users.
User Profile
Technology Grid
Compare the profile to the technology to see which is the best deployment option.
Suggested BI Technology Mix for Various Users
E-mail
Guided ad hoc
Search
Dashboard
InfoAssist Tool
Middle Manager Executive Frontline Worker External Analyst
14 Five Things You Need to Know About Your Users
Before You Deploy Business Intelligence
18. Conclusion
The primary purpose of this paper was to provide you with guidance and advice on planning
your next BI deployment. Throughout my 25-year career in the BI industry, I have realized that
Information Builders’ WebFOCUS is the BI platform with the broadest range of deployment
options, making it the ideal choice for addressing the wide array of needs outlined in the planning
paradigm. Its robust development environment lets you create easy-to-use, yet flexible reporting
and analysis applications that can be leveraged by virtually any type of user. WebFOCUS serves as
the foundation of some of the most widely used and adopted applications in the world – some
reaching millions of users.
Each of the scenarios depicted in the grids in this paper and each of the combinations of
components presented are possible deployments with WebFOCUS.
15 Information Builders