Is it Cloud or is it Desktop?

The information technology industry has seen a lot of disruption in recent years, with complexity and risk in systems rising as users demand more functional mobile capability and software developers struggle to protect and preserve their assets (users included). Skyline (by Uni-Data) is jumping right into the middle of it with Numecent, delivering solutions for software developers and cloud providers alike, and answering the question of whether it’s cloud or desktop. The answer is “yes”.

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FP&R, or, How We Kicked The Spreadsheet Habit

Are you missing the “A” in your FP&A (financial planning and analysis)? Maybe missing some of the “P” as well? Are you and your department getting a bit tired of the “FR” gig you seem to have landed?

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Metrics: Too Many Different Ways of Keeping Score

You’ve likely played an organized sport at some time in your life - How many different ways were there to keep score? How many different ways were there to determine the winner? Just one – right? It was goals, or runs, or points, or something, but never goals and/or assists, or some weird combination of runs, hits, errors, average, ERA, RBI’s and on-base percentage.

Now, ask the same question about your business – how many ways do you have of keeping score, of determining if you’ve “won” (i.e. met your key strategic objective)?

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Survey Says…. Kitchen!

The question, by the way, was: “Where do you most commonly sort your mail”. And the reason is that the kitchen is where the trash can is. Let’s quickly walk through the process of sorting through our daily mail, or my personal process anyhow.  First, you set aside the packages – usually good stuff in…

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Knowledge Squared

I was born in the Atomic Age, grew up in the Space Age, was first employed during the Computer Age, but what will likely outlast them all in relevancy is what we tend to call in these post-modern times the Information Age. What I learned in business and economics courses in college during that Computer Age was that there were four factors of production: Capital, labor, management and raw materials/land. What I think we will learn in this next age is that we were missing one – information. Up until now we’ve treated information as an asset, a subset of the other four perhaps - a little bit of capital, raw material, management and labor combined together. What we are learning is that information itself may be a bedrock principle of modern economics and society. There is even now the holographic theory of the universe – that the universe is just one big quantum computer and that it’s ALL about the information flows.

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Corporate Culture: Your Organization’s Response to Stress

Culture is how an organization internally responds to things going badly. Revenue did not meet targets; the product was late to market; the competition beat us to market, our cost structure is out of line; our quality is suffering; we’re losing customers and market share; our web site is a disaster and our user interface isn’t much better; we’re being out sizzled and out sexied.

So what is the response? Panic? Anger? Fear? Denial? Not invented here? Blame and finger pointing? CYA? Retrenchment into process and bureaucracy? Freeze everything? Fire everyone? Reorganization? An investigative committee? An acquisition? Fraud/cooking the books? Surround everyone with everything we’ve got?

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Tell the Story

What’s the story of your organization, your business?

There’s a story there, there always is. Numbers on a spreadsheet don’t do it justice. Yes, there is the annual report, but first, who reads it, and second, that’s just the point – it’s “annual”. The story of your business is dynamic, it runs all year long, 24/7. Numbers and metrics are only part of if.

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The Business Intelligence Operations Center

A presentation by Wired contributing editor Gary Wolf at [email protected] showing what is available for tracking and analyzing your body, mood, diet, spending—just about everything measurable in daily life. (Wolf also is also the co founder of the Quantified Self, a blog about “self-knowledge through numbers.”)

Gary talks about the importance of becoming aware of our own personal data by turning inward for self improvement, discovery and knowledge. By knowing ourselves better we can be more effective in the world. The same is true for knowing our data and analysis better. How do we connect with the data that we analyze day to day in our quest to provide meaningful solutions to day-to-day organizational issues?

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It Sure Is Noisy Around Here

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.

Leave a commentBiz Intelligence, Management, Strategy, Tech