Our friends over at Big Data Labs have made their GeoDash solution generally available.  Take a look at this press release.  We have been using it for a proof of concept and have been really happy with our results and the process.  You will hear more about that next

Recently, I have been recently setting up a Microstrategy 9 project for a Proof of Concept (POC )we are working on.  One of our challenges is to have one database that holds multiple companies information so we don't have the overhead of having to manage multiple databases r

I remember a story a consultant once told me years ago, they embarked on a project that would not end.  They were to develop KPI (Key Performance Indicators) for a business. After 3 months they had a list of over 300, after 6 months it grew to 600.  It never shrunk below t

As most of you who follow our blog know, Project X's RapidBI Approach and Platform is linked and depends very much on Agile Development and Real Collaboration. The challenge with the word collaboration is that often it is just talk.  I have had the opportunity to work with s

I would like to discuss now the role of the IT folks in the data governance process.  In my previous blogs, I have emphasized how important it is that the process be business led.  However the IT folks have a very important role in data governance.  The role is to pr

 I wrote last week about business intelligence and it's application within the pharmaceutical vertical based on an article I'd read.  In my post I talked about …pharmaceutical companies to get value from all that data, there needs to be a robust b

There have been a lot of questions to me around what kind of security can be set in MicroStrategy.  One of the most requested is allowing access to certain users to specific reports.  The answer is Yes we can limit access to reports based on user/user groups.  The ty

Michael and I sat down after a great morning of review on lessons learned and wanted to quickly chat about Business Intelligence Governance. In today’s CoffeeCAST we talk about the main four areas of focus without going too deep on any one.  They are: BI Governance committee BI

KPI's are very important components of our strategy to monitor and report our organizational effectiveness.  Wikepedia has a great definition that links to the similar ideas of BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) and Scorecards. In context these often seem like very daunting

As part of Project X Ltd's RapidBI platform and approach, we heavily rely on repeatable processes and infrastructure. In doing a post project review, one of the areas that I saw that is difficult to ensure through the collaboration model is understanding.  We use a variety o