Dateline: October 4, 2012 – Facebook reaches one billion users! One billion people connected on a single platform; one-seventh of the world’s population. If you assume 40,000 BCE as the start of modern humans, it took the planet 41,804 years to reach a population level of one billion; it took Facebook just 8 years to connect…
While simplified graphical reporting solutions are beneficial to the business, providing more insight into historical business performance, they don’t do much for the client on a daily basis if the accounting data isn’t up to date. Accounting professionals should recognize that these dynamic reporting solutions, tools which can provide business owners with real-time information on business activities and performance, can go a long way towards increasing the relevance of the accountant’s involvement in the client business.
Okay, I get it. Business professionals all over the world are being pressured to deliver more value and intelligence every day, yet their choices and options have become so many and varied, the influences coming from so many directions, and the solutions so bathed in complexity that many simply fail to move due to fear of…
The non-profit sector of our economy serves a wide number of people with a variety of causes. These causes serve at all levels of organization and social impact from local shelters, to county early education systems or your local United Way, to national - and even international - service providers. One thing these organizations have…
… and any fool will mind it”. ~ Henry David Thoreau. The EPA was in my neighborhood several weeks ago testing well water - never a good sign. It was determined that the subdivision just north and upstream of us had once been the site of a farm contaminated by the dumping of fuel, pesticides and…
IBM and Ohio State University have launched an analytics center that is projected to create 500 new jobs and become an education and training hub for advanced data research, big data and cognitive computing.
The topic of “big data” clearly has reached a tipping point in 2012. With plenty of coverage over the past few years in the IT press, we are now starting to see the topic of “big data” covered in mainstream business press, including a cover story in the October 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.
To help customers understand the challenges of managing “big data” as well as the opportunities that can be created by leveraging “big data”, Oracle has recently run and published the results of a customer survey, as well as white papers and articles on this topic.
Are these fads and fashions or the real deal? Are CFOs attracted to them as the shiny new toys they must have on their resume for their next bigger job and employer? My belief is these four “hot” managerial methods and tools are essential. But they need to be thought through and properly designed and customized; and not just slapped in willy-nilly just to have them as shiny new toys.
What are these “four hot tools”, you ask? Read on for insight by author Gary Cokins.
This is what the combination of analytics and visualization does best – together they filter out the noise so that you are left with the core concerns. Decision making under uncertainty is tough enough – no sense wasting time and effort striving for precision and accuracy around the WRONG variables or issues. No matter how you choose to mix your metaphors, data visualization turns down the noise so that you can hear yourself think.
What good is a visualization tool if you can’t understand what you are looking at? How can you gain insight on information that looks foreign? Can you even consider a fancy dashboard as a self-service tool if you need to get help to de-code the data?