Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Thought leaders typically discuss business intelligence in the abstract or in terms of business benefits, but I want to take a moment to drill in (pun most definitely intended) on drilldowns. They’re one of the most useful and beloved BI features. Who doesn’t appreciate being able to click […]
Some Assembly Required: The Third Route to Embedded BI
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. All roads to embedded Business Intelligence (BI) software begin with the same question: Should we build our own analytics solution or buy something we can just plug into our SaaS product and bring to market right away? It’s the classic build-or-buy conundrum, and the vast majority of companies […]
Data Ontology is the Future, and I Can’t Wait
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. When the inventor of the World Wide Web says a new technology is gonna be big, I’m inclined to listen. In this now decade-old TED Talk, W3C Director Sir Tim Berners-Lee makes a convincing case for the critical importance of what he calls “data linking,” a technology that […]
The Hallmarks of a HIPAA-Compliant Embedded BI Solution
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Since the Final Omnibus Rule was added to HIPAA in 2013, software companies serving the American healthcare sector have grown used to double-checking their business partners for compliance with federal privacy regulations. Where once only healthcare providers, insurers, and other “covered entities” (CEs) were held accountable under HIPAA, […]
Five Capabilities to Look for in a Metadata Management Solution
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Big Data keeps getting bigger. We’re generating so much information these days that we’re running out of sustainable places to put it and have begun tinkering with the idea of storing it in space. Yes, outer space. With this much information on our hands, it’s no wonder the […]
How to Better Educate Your Staff About Business Intelligence
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Self-service analytics garners praise as a hallmark of modern business intelligence (BI), but some still consider it to be a contradiction in terms. How can something as intricate as BI be self-service? Aren’t there whole college degree programs dedicated to the topic? There are, and I think the […]
Data Models That Build Themselves
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Self-service Business Intelligence (BI) is about bridging the knowledge gap that has historically separated business professionals from their data. It’s about doing away with intimate knowledge of information systems as a prerequisite for finding out last quarter’s growth margin. And when it comes to replacing SQL statements with […]
Safeguarding Against the Risks of Self-Service Data Preparation
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Let me be the first to acknowledge that agility is important. BI product’s should be predicated on the idea that end users should have direct control over their own data. I believe that it’s better for business professionals to answer their own analytical questions than to inundate IT […]
Endowment Dollars for Data: An Ad Hoc Reporting Case Study
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. The vast majority of knowledge workers utilizing Business Intelligence via their hub SaaS application, regardless of vertical, will likely never build their own reports from scratch. According to Eckerson Group’s “A Reference Architecture for Self-Service Analytics” (2016), 90% of knowledge workers in an organization use BI casually with […]
Do You Know Where Your Data Came From?
Click to learn more about author Mike Brody. Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few years (and if you have, no judgement), you know there has been growing cultural concern over data privacy and legitimacy. This is the age of fake news and consumer data monetization. Just last month, Google bought credit card […]