Episodios
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Gareth Cosker, Surface Commercial Executive at Microsoft, joins the show to share his background in IT and how he was able to develop a sustainability-focused application using Low-Code No-Code tools. Gareth speaks to the tool Squirrel365 and praises its ease of use and simplicity. Gareth also shares some of the results he was able to yield and speculates on the future of business intelligence applications.
Key Takeaways01:03 – Gareth Cosker joins the show to talk about his IT background and how his career path led him to a unique role at Microsoft
05:07 – Sustainability and a recent application Gareth developed using Low-Code No-Code tools
09:01 – Learning how to use Squirrel
13:27 – Gareth speaks to some of the results of his application and what’s next
17:39 – Why Gareth chose Squirrel365
19:45 – Gareth speculates on the future of dashboard applications
22:48 – Microsoft’s growth mindset
Tweetable Quotes“Now I still operate within the public sector, which is where my heart is and where I think technology can drive the biggest impact, whether that’s in hospitals, front line workers, counsels, those sort of establishments.” (03:25) (Gareth)
“I’ve always said about business intelligence that the aim should be for people to get in, get what they need, get out, and get on with their job.” (11:06) (Donald)
“For me I had a very specific use case. I wanted to present to a customer - which we would traditionally fdo via PowerPoint - and I needed a tool that integrated into that. So, I reached out to colleagues at Microsoft to establish if we have this. There were various creative ways that we would be able to import that into there, but it kinda didn’t give me that visual representation that I needed. Squirrel was purely down to ease of use and how simple for me to keep that kind of backend app going. And the plug-in feature in PowerPoint is really, really simple.” (18:39) (Gareth)
“Wouldn’t it be great if you were on a slide and you could just talk to that slide and it would update that data?” (21:16) (Gareth)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Gareth’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethcosker/?originalSubdomain=uk
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Ziv Barzilay, Director, Products & Engineering at Salesforce, joins the show to expound on the remarkable innovations he’s been working on at Salesforce. Ziv focuses specifically on the Squirrel business application he’s been able to integrate into the organization and the astounding results he’s already achieved less than one year after launch. Ziv discusses engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption, design strategies and what he believes the future holds for similar business intelligence solutions at Salesforce.
Key Takeaways01:03 – Ziv Barzilay joins the show to talk about his background and the exciting project he’s working on at Salesforce
05:38 – Tips for engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption
09:27 – Ziv speaks to the type of designs they’ve utilized to simplify their offerings
11:37 – Donald and Ziv speak to the value of the tool Squirrel
15:51 – How Ziv’s colleagues at Salesforce view Squirrel
18:42 – Creating new business cases and identifying value drivers
20:18 – Where Ziv sees the future of business applications such as Squirrel
21:37 – Donald and Paul take a moment to praise the remarkable innovations Ziv and his team have been able to achieve at Salesforce
Tweetable Quotes“It wasn’t easy in the beginning. We went through different design approaches and finally we were able to balance between ‘How do we capture, as much as possible, use cases and still provide a more intuitive UI that Account Executives can actually use themselves. And we were actually very successful because we have about 3,000 AEs using the tool right now and we were able to touch over a quarter of a billion dollars of annual contract value.” (04:31) (Ziv)
“Squirrel is very powerful in terms of almost every property in every component can be connected to a formula. So, the user interface is now fully dynamic based on user conditions. So, we were able to do almost everything we wanted to do with the UI. And, another advantage is that, when we worked with our stakeholders and we got a lot of feedback, we were able to quickly implement new ideas and requirements because of the ease of use. Squirrel is very easy to implement or change things and deploy that to production. It was very simple.” (12:38) (Ziv)
“It doesn’t look like B.I. or a dashboard. People look at it as a full-blown application end-to-end.” (16:23) (Ziv)
“Each business case produces hundreds of data points which we can’t get elsewhere from any third-party company. And now we generate our own benchmark, which we can use for product management, product marketing, roadmap, and other areas in the company.” (19:59) (Ziv)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Ziv’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/zbarzil/?originalSubdomain=il
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Rob Scott, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Smart WFM, joins the show to explore the consumerization of business intelligence solutions and how Human Resource departments across the globe need to leverage these solutions, along with data, to drive value and be successful. Rob discusses the unique mix of business, psychology, technical, and HR experience he brings to his role at Smart WFM. Finally, Rob provides real-world examples of how users are becoming empowered by B.I. tools and speculates on what the future holds for business intelligence.
Key Takeaways01:00 – Rob Scott joins the show to explain how his background in Psychology, Technology and Business Economics has played a key role in his current role at Smart WFM
06:48 – Technology is not a slave
08:26 – The consumerization of business systems
12:50 – Simplicity vs. complexity
16:09 – Why choice of technology is paramount
18:47 – Examples of users being empowered by B.I. tools
26:27 – Data integration in the HR world
Tweetable Quotes“This is not just an HR issue. The combination of the human mind and technology spans across all forms of business. And in my current COO role, I see that all the time. It doesn’t matter what part of the business you’re in; how we engage with technology is becoming more and more important.” (06:31) (Rob)
“The notion that digitization is all about empowering employees to do more with the technology, not have more technology, is a fundamental shift that’s taking place.” (11:41) (Rob)
“Design is quite important. And, I think it’s a future skill for any part of the organization where you have capacity to create more personalized technology. Most HR systems and HR vendors have gone down the path of trying to think of every potential option that may be required with building a feature. The problem with that is that very often people look at all these bells and whistles and go, ‘Let me see if I can find a problem that this can solve.’ And the problem may not exist.” (15:08) (Rob)
“For me, this is why I think exposing HR people to easy tools where they can literally create stuff for themselves is something that I think is going to take on a life of its own. And once people understand that and understand how it can integrate with current technology platforms they use, they’ll see the value of being able to do something really quickly and automatically build out that experience they’re trying to build for their employees.” (18:16) (Rob)
“The one thing that the HR world is coming to terms with is that they have to deal with data.” (26:27) (Rob)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Rob’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/robscottinsyd/?originalSubdomain=au
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Santi Becerra, Senior Director of Augments Analytics at Tableau, joins the show to explore Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Analytics. Santi speaks to the evolution of data visualization, explains its importance in the B.I. industry, and speculates on its future. Santi provides some insights into the work he and his team have done at Tableau and shares an interesting belief he has about the future of business intelligence.
Key Takeaways01:01 – Santi Becerra joins the show to talk about the work he’s doing with Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and Machine Learning (M.L.)
09:38 – Searching for a breakthrough solution
11:23 – Santi breaks down Analytics and speaks to the role that machines will play in the future of Analytics
18:00 – Data visualization
23:36 – An interesting trend in gaming
25:01 – Santi shares an interesting belief about the future of Business Intelligence
Tweetable Quotes“I think across the board augmented analytics, the part of the portfolios that encompasses this, have not hit a home run yet. But I don’t think it’s because users aren’t ready to receive relevant, automated, timely insights in an automatic fashion. I just think we have more to go.” (05:08) (Santi)
“We need to start providing more domain specific insights.” (10:49) (Santi)
“One of the things I’m excited about with Tableau is that being a part of Salesforce, now we’re linked to a company that has specific solutions, right? Like the Marketing Cloud, the Sales Cloud and so there’s data repositories in there that already have, to some degree, a fixed schema and, to some degree, are already domain specific. Maybe it’s why all the independent analytics vendors have gotten bought by these companies because I think now it’s a really big advantage. Now we can tap into those schemas and, presumably, the teams that are managing that could enrich those schemas.” (15:16) (Santi)
“It’s being able to take this information that people really need and rather than having to look for it, just inject it into their workflows and everyday lives so that they can’t help but be more efficient in what they do.” (29:25) (Donald)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Santi’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/santibecerra/
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today, Donald MacCormick, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, and Joshua Tapley, Senior Director of Data Visualization at Comcast, join the show to share their experiences with Data Literacy, Self-Service, and Data Visualization. Joshua speaks to the importance of creating data interfaces that are both highly intuitive and fun. Donald provides his outlook on why terms like data literacy can mean incredibly different things to different individuals. Finally, Donald and Joshua share final thoughts on the need to get data into the hands of people who need it when they need it.
Key Takeaways00:44 – Joshua Tapley joins the show to share his background in data visualization and his role at Comcast
06:31 – Donald and Joshua share their thoughts on self-service
10:36 – Creating data interfaces that are both intuitive and fun
14:07 – Sankey templates
16:57 – Joshua speaks to some of his recent successes with self-service visualization solutions
20:43 – Donald explains why terms like data literacy, self-service and data visualization mean different things to different people
27:26 – Parting words of wisdom from Donald and Joshua
Tweetable Quotes“Just as a young child can pick up an iPad and use it without instruction, our users should find everything we produce intuitive. The ability to understand intuitively is the easiest way to bridge data literacy.” (07:29) (Donald)
“I think it’s really important to have good, meaningful data that is useable for people to return. We talk about ongoing user engagement, adoption of the data assets that we build. We can spend all this time and then nobody wants to use it when they get done because it wasn’t the right solution. So we spend a lot more time making sure it’s the right thing.” (11:45) (Joshua)
“We live in a world online whereby if you go to a website that looks really nice, you’ll stay. There’s something about it that draws you in.” (13:22) (Donald)
“Most of what people are looking for, I think, is greater transparency. So, what we’re trying to do now is tie multiple elements of the data together.” (17:34) (Joshua)
“Those three topics, data literacy, self-service, and data visualization, mean incredibly different things to different people. So, data literacy to an executive is about understanding where the data comes from and understanding what they’re seeing. To an analyst, it means statistics. It means making sure that they have enough of a sample size in order to make a forecast that then their executives can trust. They’re very, very different things.” (21:04) (Donald)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Joshua’s Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-tapley/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.
In this episode, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, Donald MacCormick continues to provide his insights on Business Intelligence solutions. Donald doesn’t hold back on his opinions of self-service B.I. and why it is not the answer. He provides unique and in-depth examples of why successful B.I. interfaces should require little to no effort, training or documentation from the end user. Finally, Donald provides self-service B.I. analogies ranging from the restaurant industry to the healthcare industry.
Key Takeaways00:29 – Donald MacCormick joins the show for Part 2 of Exploring the Growth of End-to-End No Code Business Solutions to discuss why self-service B.I. not the answer
05:14 – The evolution of Business Objects
10:30 – Donald recalls an interesting story about self-service reporting
12:54 – The importance of tools like Tableau
14:16 – Donald speaks to self-service B.I. in the restaurant industry
19:54 – The doctor analogy
Tweetable Quotes“Self-service B.I. is demonstratively not the answer because we have tried it four, five, six times over. We keep trying to reinvent it.” (01:17)
“The quicker you get data to people that’s meaningful to them, the more they can use that in their everyday life.” (03:41)
“If you ask any CEO of any organization, ‘How much time do you want your salespeople to spend on querying data?’ The answer should be ‘Zero.’” (08:03)
“We no longer go out and fish for our dinner. The same should be true of reporting. We’re no longer saying everybody should do everything. We’re saying there are people who are good at this who can deliver it to the end users. We should have an information supply chain so that the end users don’t need to do self-service reporting.” (12:07)
“The amount of effort, training and documentation that is required to use a good B.I. interface should be about the same as is required to select and eat a pre-prepared sandwich. I.e. none.” (16:25)
“When you go to your television and you want to find out what’s on tonight, what do you do? You push this button called, ‘Guide,’ and it comes up on the screen and it’s a nice way of looking at what’s on the television. It doesn’t say, ‘Here’s an at-home query tool whereby you can query any television program in the world right now.’” (22:02)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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Episode Summary
Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.
In this episode, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, Donald MacCormick, joins the show to discuss his background in product management and product development. Donald speaks to the work he’s doing with end-to-end no code business solutions at Squirrel365 and why he believes it is critical to make these solutions easy and fast to access, utilize and implement. Donald provides his thoughts on the relationship between business intelligence and operational applications and what he sees as the future of B.I.
Key Takeaways00:41 – Introducing today’s guest, Donald MacCormick, who shares his background in product management, product development and his experience working with no-code tools
05:59 – Donald speaks to the work he’s doing with no-code tools at Squirrel365
11:09 – The relationship between Business Intelligence and Operational Applications
17:54 – Instant Return on Investment (ROI)
22:05 – Donald speaks to the exciting future of B.I.
Tweetable Quotes“The idea that somehow all this information people should get by having a tool and digging for themselves is not the right way to do it. We all, end users, need interfaces that are easy to use so that they can just get at this data and can use it. I coined a phrase, ‘They should be able to get in, get what they need, get out and get on with their jobs as quickly as possible.’” (04:39)
“The appreciation for how important data analytics is has grown over the years.” (07:39)
“One of the first ones they did was a Covid dashboard that had to be used in the medical environment by people who were technicians, nurses, doctors. The last thing in the world these people need to do is worry about how to get data. They need an interface that minimizes the time they are in the interface and maximizes the time they are with patients.” (16:13)
“One thing we have to be clear about is that these systems are never done. Business Intelligence systems are never finished because businesses keep changing. You have to accept that you’re gonna have to iterate and throw things out that you’ve done before.” (21:18)
Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/
Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk
Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/
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00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Anjum Sadaqat, who shares his background in finance and the decision to start a business intelligence solutions company
08:02 – Anjum breaks down best practices for approaching B.I. solutions, including the varied yet necessary roles of finance, marketing and sales
18:09 – Anjum speaks to some of the visual B.I. application solutions his organization has worked on
24:11 – Anjum discusses a project his organization is working on with the International Humanitarian City in Dubai
30:16 – The importance of having a gesture-driven mobile platform in the world of B.I. visualization
38:37 – Anjum speculates on the future of B.I.
EPISODE QUOTES
“One of my biggest frustrations throughout my career was that I couldn’t get the right data in the hands of the right people at the right time.” (02:04)
“I think any project in B.I. that is owned and run by the business has about a 90-100 percent chance of success.” (07:38)
“In this digital age everything’s gotta be mobile. If you’re not mobile first, people don’t want to use it.” (12:50)
“I didn’t know that Dubai was one of the largest hubs for humanitarian aid until I got into the project. And I’ve been living in Dubai the past fifteen years.” (25:10)
“We almost underestimate our potential customers or the users of B.I. I think they’re very open to being flexible, as long as there is a solution that allows them to play with things and be able to get things.” (33:54)
“I don’t think users are gonna take over our jobs. And I don’t think technology is going to eradicate us either.” (42:22)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Anjum’s LinkedIn
International Humanitarian City Website
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00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Heather Hill, who shares her background in business intelligence, highlights from her career and how she has advocated for more women in B.I.
05:33 – Heather speaks to the impact that Covid-19 has had on her personally and from a business perspective
07:51 – Heather shares her opinions on big data, the vital role it will continue to play in our future and best practices for managing and governing our data
13:05 – Heather discusses the challenges organizations face when it comes to ownership of data
16:05 – Challenges Heather has faced when moving her repository data to the cloud and how to overcome these obstacles
19:21 – Heather speculates on the prospect of doing good B.I. against unstructured data
23:44 – Heather speculates on the future of B.I. and expounds on the importance of user adoption
EPISODE QUOTES
“We’re still on a journey to get to the place where we can elevate our data to action.” (08:59)
“The biggest challenge is the hybrid environment. You can move your repository, your data warehouse, up to the cloud. But probably not every component of that architecture is cloud-enabled.” (16:21)
“If the journey of B.I. is to move away from a technology-focused user to a business user, then it’s hard for that user base to do B.I. on that unstructured data. I don’t think the tools are easy enough yet for the audience that we’re trying to get to.” (19:46)
“I think data storytelling is a new, hot topic of really having the folks who are telling a story with the data, rather than you having to go drive to the answers and really elevating that message to more actionable insights and actionable analytics.” (24:04)
“I think data governance is becoming more and more important as people are struggling.” (26:17)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Heather’s LinkedIn
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00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Harvey Smith, who speaks to his background in information technology and business intelligence
05:38 – Harvey expounds on the work he’s done at Holman Strategic Ventures, including their latest app, LYNKD and their shared vehicle subscription concept, Flexdrive
17:24 – Harvey speaks to the resounding impact that Covid-19 has had on his organization and their clients’ businesses
21:13 – Harvey’s thoughts on how the shift towards a gig economy is impacting business intelligence
24:37 – The work Harvey has done with predictive and artificial intelligence (A.I.) solutions
30:01 – The process of hiring talented developers, programmers and other subject matter experts
32:48 – Harvey speculates on what the future of B.I. applications will look like
EPISODE QUOTES
“Basically we [Holman Strategic Ventures] build products and we look for opportunities adjacent to the core. And that’s been our mission for the last three years.” (06:37)
“Imagine that you don’t want to lease, you don’t want to buy a vehicle. You just need a vehicle just for a certain amount of time and you don’t want to rent a vehicle. You could actually subscribe to a vehicle for the type of use you wanted.” (12:25)
“Particularly, when you look at the FedExs, the Amazons of this world, they’re part of a gig economy. And those vehicles have to be up. If that vehicle’s down, then packages aren’t being delivered on time.” (16:37)
“When you’ve got people doing work for you remote – whether it’s Lyft drivers, snow plow drivers, lawn care, housesitting – it’s crucial to have the data to give you the comfort that it’s being managed correctly. It truly is management by metrics now.” (22:02)
“It’s also critical that you understand and bring some real world experience to the data because you can make data fit any story that you want.” (28:02)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Link to LYNKD App
Harvey’s LinkedIn
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00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Donald MacCormick, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and highlights from his illustrious career
07:10 – Donald breaks down the cycle of business intelligence, technology and IT
12:47 – Donald speaks to why self-service B.I. means different things to different people
17:13 – Acquisitions in the B.I. industry
19:50 – Donald speculates on the future of B.I.
24:29 – Why Excel remains so pervasive and popular
30:19 – Donald provides his thoughts on enterprise reporting systems and the numerous other ways B.I. can be utilized
39:31 – Donald gives his opinion on Covid-19 and the future impact it may have on our world
EPISODE QUOTES
“The sad thing is that we have gone through at least three cycles and we’ve just delivered slightly better capability to the same people over and over and over again.” (10:00)
“That’s what business intelligence is like. It’s a supply chain that gets the right thing to the right people.” (16:16)
“Technology has moved on, but actually in the last thirty years, has B.I. really changed that much? And, will it change in the next five? I don’t know, but I could take a guess.” (19:36)
“I characterize it [Excel’s popularity] as the three ‘F’s: it’s familiar, it’s flexible and it’s free.” (24:52)
“If an enterprise reporting system is something that end users can quickly and easily access the data they need then it’s good.” (30:51)
“It’s a time of change. And if you can spot how your business fits into that change, then you can thrive.” (41:03)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Donald’s LinkedIn
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00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Jefferson Lynch, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and some of the projects he’s been working on with predictive A.I.
08:40 – Trends Jefferson has observed in predictive A.I. and where he sees A.I. fitting into the business intelligence equation
18:38 – Jefferson makes the case for utilizing intelligence automation over artificial intelligence and provides specific examples
21:45 – Where Jefferson sees B.I. going in the next five years
24:58 – Jefferson speaks to the impact Covid-19 has had on his company and how they have pivoted in these difficult economic times
EPISODE QUOTES
“I think what we’re starting to see is there’s a common way to go about tackling that kind of problem. And I think what’s left to happen is these more defined problems likely get encapsulated into the likes of a B.I. tool and to allow someone who isn’t necessarily an expert predictive modeler to adjust and set up that problem in that particular company.” (14:32)
“A little anecdote if I could, there was someone who is the head of quite a large hedge fund who said to me, ‘What we’re aiming to be is more Iron Man than Terminator.’ What he was getting at is that actually to be really augmented, and enabled, and helped, but still to be wholly human as well, was his aspiration for them as a company.” (16:09)
“Lots of organizations have been taking advice on what their information and B.I. strategy should be. And, I think the general move continues to be towards the act of self-service.” (22:09)
“I think a potential benefit for its longer term, if this [Covid-19] all carries on, is I think maybe we’ve had a limiting belief, in a way, in that thinking we had to meet physically with an organization that we haven’t perhaps gone after businesses in other countries.” (28:41)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Jefferson’s LinkedIn
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00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Kate Wright, who speaks to her background in business intelligence and how Covid-19 has transformed her work with SAP Analytics Cloud
08:44 – Kate shares SAP’s vision for business intelligence and the future of the intelligence enterprise
13:09 – Kate explains SAP’s aggressive strategy in business intelligence, specifically developing a cloud-based analytics platform
16:27 – Trends and changes Kate has observed in business intelligence
19:11 – Kate provides her thoughts on the role of IT in augmented B.I., the emergence of predictive A.I. and where she sees B.I. going in the next five years
24:29 – Kate looks back on what SAP could have done differently with their business intelligence strategy and what the future of augmented B.I. holds
EPISODE QUOTES
“Most of my career has been spent on business intelligence, and the last few years I’ve been focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud.” (02:36)
“The reason that SAP is focused on our message of the intelligence enterprise is because we believe – and I personally believe – that the future of enterprise applications has to be more intelligent than it is today.” (09:18)
“And when they think about analytics and they think about B.I., we want them to also start thinking about simulating, and forecasting, and correlations, and classifications. Because everyone is going to need B.I. The bread and butter is not changing anytime soon, but let’s start allowing people to do more. And that’s a big part of what we’re doing.” (11:59)
“When I have dialogues with a CFO or a CRO – no matter what line of business you’re in – the need for information and the need to really understand what you can change, how you can change it, and have that transparency is top of their mind. And they are genuinely curious.” (18:05)
“I think our [SAP’s] strategy to double down on cloud, invest heavy in augmented analytics, bring those analytics domains together, continue to evolve the business intelligence platform, those have all been the right decisions. I just wish we had done that with a larger dialogue and a larger connection with some of our business objects customer community.” (25:28)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Kate’s LinkedIn
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Podcast Production & Marketing by FullCast
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01:12 – Introducing today’s guest, Chris Sinkwitz
01:35 – Chris’ background in the home building industry
04:31 – What business intelligence means to Chris
05:39 – Unique challenges that the home building industry faces
07:35 – Utilizing B.I. for land acquisition
09:44 – Chris discusses the fallout from the housing crisis of 2008
12:45 – The role B.I. played in helping the home building industry recover from the housing crisis
15:23 – How Chris’ organization is utilizing B.I.
17:09 – Lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis
18:50 – Chris speaks to how the housing industry is better prepared today as opposed to 2008
20:14 – Chris talks about the successful marketing B.I. dashboard solution he oversaw
23:50 – Interesting takeaways from this dashboard solution
25:34 – Other B.I. solutions Chris has collaborated on
29:12 – How the usage of B.I. has changed in the home building industry over the past five years
31:53 – Chris discusses starting his own business
33:42 – New B.I. initiatives that Chris is focusing on currently
EPISODE QUOTES
“Business intelligence is looking at data holistically and comprehensively. And, it allows you to prove correlation versus causation, use your data as strategic competitive advantage, even find answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.” (04:42)
“The firm I was working at we had roughly 2,500 employees at the top of the market. And the housing crisis, when that hit, within several months we went down to 750 employees give or take.” (10:27)
“In putting that marketing dashboard together, they were able to see real time how these leads were coming in.” (21:42)
“I think there’s a lot of examples [of business intelligence] that we can go through and look at how this has helped the industry and certain firms are actually taking advantage of it.” (28:53)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Chris’ LinkedIn
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00:59 – Introducing today’s guest, Leslie Warden
01:36 – The moment Leslie knew she wanted to become an Egyptologist
04:03 – Leslie speaks to some of the excavations she’s participated in
08:21 – A non-glamorized look at archeology
10:53 – The primary goal of archeologists
12:26 – How archeologists piece together the past from broken objects
15:32 – Collecting, documenting and analyzing data
18:57 – The incredibly vast amount of data that Leslie and her colleagues collect
20:39 – How business intelligence can help in the collection, classification, and analysis of this data
22:34 – Challenges Leslie has faced incorporating business intelligence into her excavations
30:18 – Modifying the business intelligence dashboard to include classification and input functions
33:32 – Other benefits Leslie has experienced with the dashboard
35:27 – Leslie speaks to the reaction other specialists have had to the dashboard
38:19 – Next steps for Leslie’s use of business intelligence in archaeologyEPISODE QUOTES
“Looking back on it, it was just the whole kit and caboodle, if you will, right? Animal-headed gods! What’s not to like about animal-headed gods?” (03:10)
“We just move so slowly because we’re reconstructing ancient life based on the little bits and pieces that are left for us. And, if I’m just digging for the showy complete objects, I’m actually wasting 98-99 percent of what’s actually remaining.” (10:53)
“And then for the analysis, you’re left with a bit of a challenge because there is clearly far too much data from any excavation to be entirely analyzed and entirely published.” (17:08)
“What I have found to be my personal challenge is learning the language of the tech and the tech team and them learning the language of the archaeology so that we can actually have productive conversations.” (25:46)
“It [the dashboard] took that three-step process and made it into a seamless and beautiful one-step process, which of course limits human error.” (31:15)
“I’m a huge advocate for getting people from the tech world and from the computer world involved in excavations because there’s so much that we have to share with each other.” (41:08)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Leslie’s LinkedIn
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01:02 – Introducing today’s guest, Shaun Taylor
01:22 – Shaun’s background with business intelligence and technology
02:37 – Shifting into a second career in education
03:01 – The changes Shaun has seen in the CIO role throughout the years
04:23 – What business intelligence means to Shaun
05:33 – How new business intelligence technologies shape out decision-making
06:47 – How Shaun got involved in business intelligence
07:54 – The multiple challenges Shaun faced as CIO of the Tacoma Public Schools
09:50 – The data challenge
11:10 – The challenges that public school systems face
13:27 – The importance of metrics
15:32 – How long it took to extract business intelligence metrics from the public school system
17:18 – Developing business intelligence dashboards
20:26 – Key factors that drove the actions that led to such a dramatic increase in graduation rates
22:07 – How the outside community impacted the success of Shaun’s business intelligence dashboards
23:15 – How the community, school board, and faculty reacted to this data
25:16 – Shaun speaks to the ripple effect this dashboard has had on other school districts
26:31 – Next steps for the Tacoma School District
29:25 – Next steps for Shaun in his consulting business
31:47 – The challenge to change the education system itselfEPISODE QUOTES
“And when I retired from the navy that’s when I tried to decide how to best leverage what I understood about information and how to help kids.” (02:27)
“What is the definition of success? That became a pretty challenging topic amongst the school board, the leadership of the district and also the community, because everyone had their own perceptions as to what success is.” (12:24)
“By the way, in education, ‘business intelligence’ is not a term they like to use because they think they’re different from business.” (14:50)
“Each two to three years, we added more benchmarks to see what else maybe we can do to influence better results for the kids. By the time we were done, just last year, our graduation rate is up eighty-seven percent from fifty-five percent.” (18:45)
“Education is a human intensive industry.” (21:01)
“Ya gotta have leadership buy-in and ya have to have leadership credibility to be able to pull something off like this.” (25:59)
“We need to hold school districts, administrators, and teachers accountable for what’s happening in schools.” (32:26)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Shaun’s LinkedIn
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00:47 – Introducing today’s guest, Don Woods
01:04 – Don speaks to his role at ARI
02:34 – Telematics explained
05:50 – What business intelligence means to Don
07:19 – How business intelligence has evolved at ARI over the years
09:48 – Don speaks to the vendor management dashboard solution that ARI created
14:48 – Meeting customer needs
15:30 – Measuring the results of this business intelligence dashboard solution
16:23 – Challenges ARI has faced while doing business in Germany
18:28 – The role of analytics
19:11 – The Fleet Health Card
23:19 – How Don and ARI built the algorithm necessary to build their predictive model
25:25 – Customer reactions to the new data tools that ARI is developing
26:47 – The prescriptive and human element of business intelligence
31:28 – Other ways to differentiate through vertical markets
33:25 – Future plans for telematics
36:31 – Remarketing
37:42 – What Don believes the ultimate goal for business intelligence will be
41:54 – Don speaks to other technologies such as artificial intelligenceEPISODE QUOTES
“Really what it [business intelligence] means to me is what it kinda says on the tin, right? It really is generating intelligence for the business. So it’s really about using data to drive good business decisions.” (06:05)
“All of a sudden it starts to snowball. Once you start gaining that competency, then you start to see lots and lots of different areas where this happens, where you’re able to use the data to make and find nuggets of information.” (25:04)
“It’s kinda like brushing your teeth. If you didn’t brush your teeth for twenty years but then you brushed today, you’re compliant with brushing your teeth. But the damage has been already done. ” (28:45)
“You’re starting to see that there’s more data crunching and there’s more strategic thinking around data being done across all areas of organizations.” (38:22)
“It’s really a fun space, this automotive and telematics space, to be involved in right now.” (44:26)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Don’s LinkedIn
ARI’s Website
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00:46 – Introducing today’s guest, David Behr
00:57 – David speaks to his role at USPI
01:38 – David’s background in business intelligence
04:19 – What business intelligence means to David
05:13 – David’s first successful integration of business intelligence
08:50 – The value of business intelligence and survey dashboards
11:22 – The Greenfield Business Intelligence Account
14:56 – How the surgery centers at USPI operate
16:47 – Quick wins for David
21:09 – Constantly moving on to new projects
23:13 – The decision to focus on the clinical side of business intelligence
25:59 – Other factors that influence individual clinical cases
27:13 – How David was able to track results from facilities who used the dashboard
27:53 – Feedback from physicians who have utilized the dashboard
29:25 – The behavioral response to business intelligence
30:41 – David’s recent collaboration with high school athletes
33:23 – The next phases of business intelligence
37:09 – David’s ultimate goal for business intelligenceEPISODE QUOTES
“My passion in B.I. now is much more on the visualization side versus the static report side.” (07:13)
“Through the ‘What if?’ they’d also be able to look at if they noticed that their drug and med expense happened to be red each month, they can click on it and it would take you to a whole nother screen that was all the best practices that were collected around drugs and meds.” (20:19)
“We’re kinda working on a better way to manage, ‘How do we get those best practices rolling in?’” (22:49)
“What we’ve done is we’ve actually broken these cases out into that level on granularity that I can look at ACL with knee scope and then I would only be looking at cases that did an ACL and a knee scope.” (26:31)
“I think it makes a difference if the people out there who are driving a business know that they’re being tracked and held accountable to what they’re doing.” (29:52)
“So, we’ll have a dashboard we built for the facility, but then we have the exact same one built where you can roll up the numbers to the region, roll up the numbers to the market President so they’ve got visibility as well now which I think at the end of the day helps everybody. ” (30:27)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
David’s LinkedIn
USPI’s Website
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00:26 – Welcome to Limitless B.I.
00:45 – Introducing today’s guest, Jenny Roberts
01:06 – The goal of the TX2 Program
02:18 – Key metrics that the TX2 Program uses to measure success
04:20 – Collecting the data necessary for this program
06:17 – How the World Wildlife Fund keeps count of the tigers
09:08 – How tigers can predict the future
11:18 – Jenny reflects on how the business intelligence dashboard has benefited her team
14:21 – How the World Wildlife Fund responded to this dashboard tool
16:20 – The impact this tool has had on global governments
17:52 – How the business intelligence dashboard has aided in the success rate of the TX2 Program
20:37 – Next steps for the World Wildlife Fund and the TX2 Program
22:40 – Working with the Cambodian government
23:18 – Jenny praises the level of global government interest in the TX2 Program
24:55 – Jenny shares her plans for future endeavorsEPISODE QUOTES
“Poaching for illegal wildlife trade is probably the biggest threat to tigers. So it’s very important that we monitor whether we’ve got those safety protection mechanisms in place.” (03:46)
“Normally, if tigers go extinct or start to decrease in an area, it’s an indication to us of what’s happening further down the food chain at the bottom. If something in the food chain is not right, then normally the top predator is the one that’s first effected.” (10:09)
“We need to act quickly, otherwise there’s going to be far more species and far more ecosystem damage to come.” (10:31)
“Often the government doesn’t have the same kind of monitoring intensity that we do for conservation and tiger conservation. So, it’s been able to make it easier for us to communicate what’s going on in their own landscape in some cases.” (15:50)
“I think it [the business intelligence dashboard] certainly plays a role in this big challenge of trying to double the number of tigers in the wild. It gives us evidence to support where we’re prioritizing.” (18:20)
LINKS MENTIONED
Limitless BI Website
Jenny’s LinkedIn
TX2 Website
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