"Culture and bureaucracy are the two barriers. People just need to stop hugging their data. People love their data so much."

"Culture and bureaucracy are the two barriers. People just need to stop hugging their data. People love their data so much."

-- Dan Morgan, chief data officer at the Department of Transportation, as quoted by CIO.com

I had to smile when I read this quote.  So that's what makes Business Intelligence, #EMI (Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence) and other data analysis applications so enticing.  We DO love our data!  In the industrial automation market, data makes stuff work.  Data makes the visibility and control of processes possible.  And you need to treat your data with respect, because if you don't believe it, processes can quickly get out of control.  This becomes not only a profitability issue, but a safety issue and a sustainability issue.  So yes, we need to hug our data.  We need to understand it, keep it close, nurture it and let it safely grow. 



 

Repost, with Comments: Moving CPG Analytics from Hindsight to Foresight

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/headlines/trending-topics/id41038/moving-cpg-analytics-from-hindsight-to-foresight/

An interesting article from Progressive Grocer uncovers opportunities for CPG companies to use analytics in their decision making, especially for anticipating consumer habits, trends and the resultant product determinations that can be made.

We see a similar trend for the operations side of CPG/Food and Beverage companies.  That although the need for products such as Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI) exist, the uptick is not as great as for complementary products, such as Manufacturing Execution Systems.  Because "EMI" functionality can be partially achieved by reporting and other historian-based analysis, companies may not appreciate the full benefits of a pure EMI product. 

Wonderware Intelligence actually employs the industry-leading BI (Business Intelligence) dashboard from Tableau Software. This makes your enterprise more transparent, because you can use the same tool for business analytics as well as operational performance.  EMI, and BI, provide insight, allow you to make informed decisions, and avoid disruptions in your business by anticipating trends, out of norm conditions, or seasonal anomalies.

Business Intelligence in the Palm of Your Hand: SmartGlance

The two offerings from the Apple stable – iPhone and iPad, along with Android technology from Google and the Windows 8 phone, have completely changed the face of business in recent years. The wide adoption of the tools of mobile business intelligence is testimony to this fact. The products in mobile technology are witnessing drastic changes and are becoming adaptable to the new technology along with becoming mature. Mobile BI has revolutionized business; however, enhanced devices and better tablets and technology are the real reasons for propelling the market.

Business Intelligence through an iPad: SmartGlance

The interactive business intelligence iPad visualizations provided by SmartGlance can empower the businesses to quickly explore all the vital information on these devices. They can now uncover the problem areas, find answers and spot the outliners for aiding the business process.

SmartGlance brings Business Intelligence to the iPad

The business intelligence-enabled iPad solutions provided by SmartGlance render impressive visual discovery, are attractive in providing dashboards which are boardroom style, excellent visualizations and reporting patterns.

Mobile dashboards – What to choose? Apps or browsers

Business intelligence and mobile dashboards are terms which are amongst the hottest discussed topics in the corporate as well as industrial world. This is quite justifiable too, as the access to important company data on the mobiles is extremely critical for aiding the process of decision making. However, as the industries and companies are contemplating and evaluating various aspects for the deployment of business intelligence on the phones, and this field seems to be exploding like never before, there is one debate which is seen rising; the debate about applications versus browsers.

The rising popularity of functions of mobile dashboards and the application marketplaces such as Android marketplace and iTunes stores is witnessing the developers swooning for more and the customers are caught in frenzy for downloading the latest apps to aid their work. From the business perspective; especially when we consider the medium and large enterprises, the demand from the users is seen increasing. However, clouds still loom over the management of these mobile dashboard, applications and the security concerns.

Business intelligence and mobile dashboard are soon becoming the latest technologies which are caught in the crossfire of the debate. There are two important thoughts which pop up when we consider mobile business intelligence. The first is the installation of dedicated applications on every device, and the second is the delivery of screens which are based on server apps to browsers of every device.

Both the approaches as mentioned above have their pons and cons. Common understanding will suggest that the dedicated apps will work faster along with the mobile dashboards. However, with technological advancements, the gap between the two arguments is quickly closing. The browsers too are seen to provide quick solutions.

So it will not matter what you choose for your mobile dashboards. The benefits will result in aiding you, rather than burdening you with more learning time.

Mobile Business Intelligence – Future of business strategies

The success ratio of analytics and business intelligence in any organisation is measured always by the user acceptance levels and how pervasive is the BI for the company and also how it aids in the decision making process. All this have given prominence to mobile business intelligence in recent times.

Research has shown that there are various trends of mobile business intelligence which will shape the tactics and strategies of the organisations in the future years. The smartphones are now the most important technologies used by businesses for improvement of business intelligence adoption. Though the mobiles enable BI for attracting the users and reaching new clients, ease in using and an experience which can engage the user is vital for the success of any policy of BI.

A broader data base will always generate insight for improved decision making. In operational environments, the mobile dashboards along with multiple sources of data from the relevant systems will result in enhancing the awareness of the decision makers according to the situations on field. This will eventually lead to betterment of the operational decisions. Each business will look for making better utilisation of the information they have in hand.

The top notch of managers in organisations is seen enthusiastic in the adoption of mobile business intelligence. The early signs are encouraging in this sector and are showing gradual traces of replacing the presentations, spread sheets and mails being used for insights of business.

The real drive that fosters the adoption of mobile business intelligence is not the mobility itself. The enthusiasm is mainly derived from engaging experience and ease of usability as mentioned earlier. The fast access and convenience to timely and relevant business data are attributes which are increasing the liking for mobile business intelligence in the form of smartphones and tablets.

Business intelligence iPad has Completely Altered the Way Business is Done

There is no one who will ever argue that management of business intelligence is a vital aspect for the success of the business. This is more prominent in the business environment which is passing recession. Additionally, there are many businessmen who will vouch for the fact that the major portion of BI is to stay ahead or at the top of your competitors always. The strategy of business intelligence needs to provide a substitute for observing the news in the industry. For many decades now, this news monitoring was meant to be assigned to someone in the marketing, product management or public relations team. Then the business world witnessed the advent of Google alerts for some period till it was taken by storm by the business intelligence iPad.

The business intelligence iPad economy changed the face of commerce completely. The manner in which business was performed saw drastic alteration. The iPad completely revolutionized the business activities for good.

It goes without saying that some of the apps created for business intelligence iPad which are low in cost are one of the ploys used by the managers for benefiting the business needs. The development of enterprise BI is helping many of the business concerns in condensing various streams of useful content from varied sources to combine into singular channels. This gives prominence to the users in accessing the important content from external sources into a single place or platform.

The key element that aids the success of developing business intelligence is the saved time via better and enhanced methods of filtering and searching. This is true irrespective of the goal being to monitor the web, or the combination of the internal streams of data which include sales and registration information, customer data, and marketing data, with the external information which includes consultant reports, analyst reports, industry news and so on. The smart apps provided by business intelligence iPad have made life easier for the businesses.

5 Best Advantages of Mobile Dashboards in Business

Business intelligence is taking the commercial world by storm, and the importance of mobile dashboard in this activity is increasing day-by-day. The culture of decision making is getting data driven; however, people are still confused on ways of getting there. Let us consider the 5 best advantages of Mobile Dashboard in business.

Approach of author-once

Instead of getting into the trap of proliferation of dashboards, take the approach of author-once and distribute everywhere. You need to plan the mobile dashboard once for adapting the existing dashboards with the use of BI solutions, thus benefiting everyone in the process.

Screen

The better use of the screen space results in putting the most viewed and vital data at top of dashboards. This provides for better data receiving for the business world.

On the go

The use of mobile dashboards has made it easy for the sales persons to view the important files while on the go and take important decisions accordingly. The specific data along with filters makes their job easy.

Customized solutions

The existing dashboards can be customized with the use of mobile intelligence software. You will find this process positively enhancing the usability of the mobile phone. Receiving all the data as per requirements is facilitated due to the optimization of the mobile dashboard.

Leverage the natural process of the mobile

Mobile business intelligence fosters more than just the social interaction provided by traditional BI processes, wherein the employees are just stuck to their desks. With the advent of Mobile BI, employees can now move around at any place and location, and still stay connected with important information and colleagues.

Along with the 5 best advantages of mobile dashboards in business as mentioned above, the high interactivity while walking through live data allows various other benefits too. This function has become a necessity nowadays, and businesses just cannot avoid it anymore.