Back in 2009, solutions marketer Nic Smith stated succinctly that “Business Intelligence is about providing the right data at the right time to the right people so that they can take the right decisions.” With the amount of data available to businesses, it is critical that the data is

If you’re a retailer, chances are you’ve got loads of data from your customers, but the question on the minds of many is how to take advantage of it all? The digital age is also the age of personalized experiences, but there are plenty of marketers who have yet to take advantage of th

As we all know every project starts with a plan.  It is crucial to have a roadmap to guide you on any endeavour that you plan to undertake.  As it is said, if you don’t have a plan then you plan to fail.  Of course, we need to have a plan that depicts your objectives and incorporates

Some of you may be surprised to read I've recently become less religious about Teradata. That's not because Teradata has declined or it's competitors have improved significantly. It's mainly because I see the market moving toward realtime and near realtime reporting. T

One of the favorite parts of my job is being able to participate in doing new and interesting things.  This can be new technology, new approaches or just stepping outside my comfort zone. I really strongly suggest you find ways in your life to get a chance to do this.  Mak

Why people do and do not do things?  Readiness determines the why.   People only do what they are ready and willing to do.  How can we apply this idea to our work?   An example might help.  The IT group in an organization wanted to give new and better sys

I was sailing with friend recently and we had time to talk in a long night of low wind.  He was a police officer who got interested into computers in the early days.  He had the idea that the policeman’s notebook would be a great application of personal computers. 

I had the good fortune tonight to run into a great post over on Joel Spolsky where he is talking about the impact in really any situation where you are heads down focused on a goal and someone comes and interrupts you to ask a question or maybe you get sidelined onto a short lived ini

I was in a lunch meeting the other day talking about sales process and delivery process.  Though both are unrelated from a task point of view, I find the use of process and it’s value the same. Both Steve White (over at Effectivation) and I agreed that the true value of the

In a number of client environments I have often been amazed by the number of people that can be assigned to a project.  Project Managers, Business Users, Business Analysts, Architects, Technical Analysts, Developers, Database Analysts, Database Administrators, Data Modelers, Subj