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Business Intelligence

What to look for in a good Business Intelligence solution

EducationBusiness Intelligence (BI) solutions come in all shapes and sizes. Some emphasize architecture while others tout their flashy interface. Some cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others cost hundreds.

With all of these options, how do you separate the good from the bad?

We just released a BI Guide aimed at helping you do just that. It outlines which essential features and capabilities make a good BI solution, and even separates each feature into 4 different categories:

  • High-level features
  • Security features
  • Must-have applications
  • Advanced features

The guide is free and you can download it right here: Essential features to look for in a good Business Intelligence solution. I hope you find it useful.

Weekly recap: 2013 IT priorities, why BI is failing businesses, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on why BI is failing business, 2013 IT priorities, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Why business intelligence software is failing business
While the need for business intelligence is growing, many BI solutions don’t adequately meet the company’s needs. Why not? This article highlights a few reasons, like poor usability and a lack of personalized notifications and alerts. BI software should be simple to use and should automatically alert users when certain data thresholds are met.

Weekly recap: Top 7 in-demand tech skills for 2013, how to choose a BI solution, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the in-demand tech skills, how to choose a BI solution, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Top 7 in-demand tech skills for 2013
Maintaining current skills is one of the most difficult aspects of being an IT professional. If you’re looking to keep your skills up to date, this article outlines which areas to address.

Weekly recap: 9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design, mobile BI, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on mobile app user experience, CSS3 transitions, and more. I hope you find them useful:

9 ways to improve user experience in mobile design
Developing applications for use on mobile devices is a whole new world for traditional web developers. You must build applications for a touch-based interface on a small screen, and that isn’t easy. This article gives some great tips for developers who want to create better mobile interfaces.

5 ways BI will change in the next 5 years

EducationThe world of Business Intelligence (BI) is undergoing some pretty fascinating changes. Whether or not you buy into the “Big Data” hype, you can’t deny the fact that we’re generating crazy amounts of data–more so than ever before.

What are we doing with all of this data? Or, more specifically, do we fully understand the potential? I’m not so sure that many companies know the answer to those questions.

While these changes create many questions, here’s one thing you can count on: Data analytics is changing, and will play an increasingly important role in the business world. When you combine this deluge of data with recent tech trends, we get a few very important changes to the world of Business Intelligence. What are they? Here are 5 key ways that BI will change in the near future:

Weekly recap: 4 trends revitalizing BI, useful jQuery snippets, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on BI trends, useful jQuery snippets, and more. I hope you find them useful:

14 handy jquery code snippets for developers
If you do any web development, here’s a page you’ll want to bookmark. It provides some of the most commonly used jQuery snippets all in one place, for easy copy-and-pasting during web development.

Weekly recap: HTML5 features you didn’t know existed, BI adoption, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on HTML5 features, BI adoption, and more. I hope you find them useful:

How well do you know your ide/development tool
Some developers worry that if they start using a tool or an IDE, they’ll become dependent on that tool and turn into a worthless developer. This article explains why you should stop worrying, and love your development tools.

Weekly recap: Top 10 strategic technologies for 2013, eCommerce mistakes, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the strategic technologies for 2013, Business Intelligence, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Business intelligence and why you need it
Business intelligence is a hot topic right now, but why is it so important? Why does your business need “business intelligence” all of a sudden. Here’s an article that will help you answer those questions.

Weekly recap: Top 10 cloud jobs, mobile BI, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the mobile BI, HTML5, and more. I hope you find them useful:

Mobile BI: Exciting but intimidating
Mobile BI is about more than just accessing BI apps on your smartphone or tablet. It’s about harnessing the new data we can now access thanks to mobile. This article goes into more detail about this emerging trend.

Weekly recap: Will the cloud end the IT department, CSS tricks, and more…

EducationEvery week, I share the most interesting and useful tech articles that I’ve found over the past week. This week’s top articles focus on the cloud, BI, and more. I hope you find them useful:

10 reasons why your users won’t use your BI solution
Did you know that half of all BI projects fail? Why is that? The biggest cause of BI failure is user adoption. Specifically, it’s difficult to make users start using a new BI solution. How can you fix this problem? While this article gives some good tips, there’s another great solution mentioned in this article: Why users don’t use business intelligence.