Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 @ 03:36 AM
Most business intelligence tools are good at answering the first question someone might ask, such as “What are my best selling products?” or “Who are my top customers?” or “What are the sales trends for my products or customers?” Some BI tools go a little further to provide clever ways of visualizing answers to questions like these.
Answering the initial question is not all that difficult, as evidenced by the number of tools that can do it. The tough part is answering the subsequent question based on the answer to the first question, and then the third and fourth questions, and so on. I'm not talking just about drilling down, which while useful does not go far enough. The greater difficulty is making it possible for business people to answer any question they come up with in highly intuitive and interactive way.
I talked about this with QlikTech’s market intelligence manager, Tim Brain. He walked through a scenario showing how QlikView is designed to do just this: answer the unpredictable questions.
Imagine you’re a marketing analyst who wants to understand where to focus your promotional efforts. The first question you want to answer is, “What have been my most profitable products so far in 2010?” Next, you want to understand which customers are buying these products. As you think it through you realize that what you really want to know is which customers are not buying them. You click your way through a QlikView document. You come up with another question: “Which of those customers who aren't buying our most profitable products have been active buyers in the last two months?” And there you have it: your list of customers to target in a marketing campaign.
Using insights gleaned in QlikView, you can begin putting together a campaign to target specifically those customers who are active buyers but who are not buying the products you need them to be buying. QlikView helped you find not just the associated data (highlighted in white), but the unassociated data (highlighted in gray).
The really useful answer is rarely the initial one provided by a report or a specific piece of analysis. We’re not talking about a drill path; rather, we’re talking about a series of related questions based on a set of data associations. With Qlikview, data associations persist as the user conducts analysis. QlikView works the way your mind works. It’s intuitive and supports the natural flow of the insight discovery process, answering not just the obvious questions, but the unobvious questions as well.
QlikPower is an implementation partner for QlikView. If you would like to find out how QlikPower can help you fill out the form here.
Reproduced from QlikView's Blogroll
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 @ 04:58 AM
QlikTech today announced successful enterprise deployments of QlikView business intelligence software by VIP Parts, Tires & Service, the largest privately owned automotive aftermarket retail chain in New England. VIP’s business footprint spans wholesale, fleet and commercial divisions, as well as 56 retail stores. Using QlikView to integrate, analyze and search millions of transactions from operational and POS (Point of Sale) systems across locations, VIP moved from green-bar and spreadsheet reporting to real-time operational scorecards and holistic, multi-level views of business performance, improving management controls and response to business issues.
VIP recognized a need to embrace an enterprise-wide business intelligence system that could reach the furthest parts of its organization and bring data from multiple departments and sources together into a single solution. After an exhaustive search, VIP selected QlikView based on its ease of use, pre-integrated tools such as ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), and the ability to provide web-based access to data search, analysis and reporting throughout the company.
“Our CEO became one of the biggest fans of QlikView because it allowed him to drill down through corporate data right to the SKU level. District managers are thrilled to now have access to the same performance-based reports that they can share with store-level executives,” said Dan Grosz, the company’s VP of Information Systems.
VIP rolled out its first QlikView dashboards focusing on store operations in only a few weeks and achieved all its initial goals in just nine months, covering functional areas such as:
- Executive Analysis, increasing C-level visibility of operational KPIs by consolidating data from all parts of the company into a single QlikView
- Sales Analysis, leveraging POS data in new ways such as ranking sales by vehicle type down to SKU level
- Marketing Analysis, aligning merchandising and dealer services with customer purchasing patterns
- Operational Analysis, tracking store performance down to technician level
- Supply Chain Analysis, tracking inventory turns and Gross Margin Return on Investment (GMROI) down to SKU level (Prior to QlikView, calculating inventory turns was a slow, laborious process that limited calculations to only “buckets” of parts and tires. GMRO couldn’t even be calculated.)
- Payroll Analysis, consolidating payroll reporting and managing payroll performance from an enterprise view.
With QlikView, VIP drill down into detailed customer buying patterns and company performance across their wholesale and dealer businesses any way they want. Operational scorecards with data views matched to the specific needs of each end user provide the ability to set goals, quickly identify problems and track progress against them.
About VIP Parts, Tires & Service
VIP Parts, Tires & Service is New England’s largest privately held automotive parts and accessories chain. Based in Lewiston, Maine, VIP has 56 stores in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts and a business footprint spanning retail, wholesale, fleet and commercial divisions. Since 1958, VIP has been the place where New Englanders turn for everything they need to keep their vehicles running at peak performance. VIP is staffed with ASE Certified technicians and counter personnel seven days a week and is the only New England resource for high quality, name-brand original equipment parts, tires and repair services. The company backs its prices with a 200% price guarantee and offers lifetime warranties on parts and labor
QlikPower is an implementation partner for QlikView. If you would like to find out how QlikPower can help you fill out the form here.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Thu, Jun 24, 2010 @ 05:50 AM
I attended a really excellent Sales Directors Forum last week
and it really woke me up to the demand out there in so many organisations for better data analysis. The organisers from
Treacy Consulting did a superb job in getting over 30 Sales Managers and Sales Directors from different organisations to meet to discuss the challenges facing them as we get through the recession. Among the topics discussed were their responses to the following questions
1. Do you expect a year on year increase in sales for 2010?
2. How has your sales headcount changed in the last 2 years?
3. What sales team headcount are you predicting for the next 12 months?
4. Does your company forecast an increase in bad debt provision/ collection for the next 12 months ?
In their responses to the questionnaire, which had been filled out in advance, the attendees had indicated that they were spending money on CRM systems (50%), Search Engine Optimisation (50%), and Blogging & Social Media (68%). But when the discussion started I was fascinated to note that many wanted better and faster data analysis to be made available to them for immediate decision making in so many different areas.
Value versus Volume
A large Drinks Manufacturer wanted better Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurement to determine what product mix they should be promoting. He pointed out that in difficult times we need better data and data analysis so that we can understand how to grow value when we cannot grow volume. In order to do this we need to better understand the Promotional Mix and this is driven by Customer Insight. ‘Promotions that are not measured are a waste of money’ he said. Their product is the same drink but packaged and promoted in different ways. They have a large family pack, different size bottles and cans, different adverts and promotions and so on. There is obviously a different cost profile associated with the different product mixes and so the challenge is to better understand the value that can be extracted from promoting the optimal mix. This can only be done by constantly measuring the demand at a granular level and delivering this information accurately and in an intuitive way so that the decision makers can do a better job. For this to be done they would need better Key Performance Indicators and better data analysis.
Business Intelligence
QlikView is the Business Intelligence solution for this. Demand can be tracked over time – different outlets will have different social groupings and age profiles – these can be measured and mapped against the demand for the different products and for different time frames, even for different hours in the day. The Point of Sale system can deliver the information from all the outlets and this can be fed directly into
QlikView. Using its powerful associative software
QlikView can instantly analyse and show trends – and more importantly it can alert the user to unusual patterens and even predict future demand.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Jun 18, 2010 @ 10:40 AM
Instant analysis, greater insight, and rapid delployments are the main benefits of in-memory analytics. It used to be the case that there were only a small number of business intelligence users in an organisation, and these people were happy to get a weekly report. Not any more - with modern tools, such as In-Memory 
Analytics that take advantage of the huge advances in technology, you can spread decision making throughout the organisation and you don't have to spend large quantities of money or involve your IT staff in developing complex reports. The pace of business now demands fast access to information and easy analysis; if the tools aren't fast and easy, business intelligence will continue to have modest impact, primarily with experts who have no alternative but to wait for an answer to a slow query. In-memory analytics promises to deliver decision insight with the agility that businesses demand. It's a win for business users who gain self-service analysis capabilities, and for IT departments which can spend far less time on query analysis, cube building, aggregate table design, and other time consuming performance-tuning tasks. Some even claim that in-memory technology eliminates the need for a data warehouse and all the cost and complexity that entails. Business users have long complained about slow query responses. If managers have to wait hours or even just a few minutes to gain insights to inform decisions, they're not likely to adopt a BI tool, nor will front-line workers who may only have time for gut-feel decision-making. Instead they'll leave the querying to the few BI power users, who will struggle to keep up with demand while scarcely tapping the potential for insight. In many cases, users never ask the real business questions and instead learn to navigate slow BI environments by reformulating their crucial questions into smaller queries with barely acceptable performance. For example, the Austin, Texas, fire department serves over 740,000 residents and responds to more than 200 calls a day. The department recently deployed QlikTech's QlikView to better analyze call response times, staffing levels and financial data. QlikView is an in-memory analytic application vendor that has been growing rapidly in the last few years. With QlikView, users can get to data in new ways and perform what-if analysis, which the department says has helped in contract negotiations.
Benefits of QlikView go well beyond the fire department. "Unless we spend more efficiently, costs for safety services will take a larger share of tax dollars, making budgets less available for services such as libraries and parks," says Elizabeth Gray, a systems supervisor. Gray says that attendance and payroll data come from different systems and never seemed to make the priority list in the central data warehouse. "With QlikView, we can access multiple data sources, we can control transformations and business logic in the QlikView script and easily create a presentation layer that users love."
In many cases, In-Memory products such as QlikView have been deployed at the departmental level, because central IT has been too slow to respond to specific business requirements. A centralized data warehouse that has to accommodate an enterprise's diverse requirements can have a longer time-to-value. Demand for In-Memory is also strong among smaller companies that lack the resources or expertise to build a data warehouse; these products offer an ideal alternative to older BI tools because they can analyze vast quantities of data in memory and are a simpler faster alternative to relational data marts.
To see more on how QlikView works, check out our World Cup App.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Wed, Jun 16, 2010 @ 04:10 AM
Kurt Schlegel is a vice president in Gartner Research, where he focuses on business intelligence and its ability to improve decision making and optimise performance. He joined Gartner in April 2005 with the acquisition of Meta Group, where he wrote extensively about the business intelligence market.
At a recent Gartner Summit on Business Intelligence he gave a discussion on emerging trends in this market, I have added my comments to his 9 points
1) In memory analytics: As memory capacities increase and costs continue to fall, it absolutely makes sense for us to use in-memory models to analyse data - it's faster and requires less pre calculation; it's only the software that has been built to take advantage of this technology that gives any benefits. Beyond super-fast analysis, one of the compelling features of QlikView business intelligence and a few other in-memory business intelligence tools is the ability to perform what-if analysis on the fly. For example, users can input budget values or price increases to forecast future sales. The results are immediately available and held in memory. In contrast, most disk-based OLAP tools would require the database to be recalculated, either overnight or at the request of an administrator.
2 ) Columnar databases: This is a discussion that has been rumbling on for decades, and in these days of multi-billion row tables and petabyte-sized systems, you might think that columnar databases make more sense than ever, but not everyone agrees, particularly those who argue that analytics is better through row-based models.
3) Cloud: The Cloud isn't the problem here. The existing players are having trouble moving their pricing models to a SaaS model with the consequent reduction in upfront revenues. So I expect it's the new entrants like GoodData that will start to rise here.
4) Interactive visualization: The right graphics deliver insight faster and deeper than simple pie charts. But can the front line troops really understand a scatter plot?
5) Integrated search: I think the Google interface should dominate here.
6) Mobile Business Intelligence: iPhone and IPad applications are already available from some business intelligence vendors like QlikView.
7) Analytical MDM: Master data management combined with brains and analytics can help solve the multiple version of truth problem plaguing most companies. This is the solution to the data quality morass, but it will take time.
8) Data mash-ups: In an increasingly unstructured world we are going to need solutions that combine internal structured data with an exploding growth in social media.
9) Scenario modeling:. In memory analytics and increased computing power will allow everyone build sophisticated what-if models based on vast quantities of data.
To see how QlikView and in-memory business intelligence works, check out our WorldCup Kick It & Qlik It App.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 @ 09:31 AM
QlikView has developed a FREE World Cup application so that soccer fans can enjoy discovering how Business Intelligence is great for discovering hidden facts and statistics really quickly from all the available data on World Cup performances.
Known as Kick IT and Qlik IT, this application gives World Cup fans a quick and easy way to discover unique facts and access comprehensive football data. Find historical data as far back as 1930, to as recent as the past hour of world football action. Analysis can be done by Year, Country, Player, Major World Tournament, or by dozens of other dimensions - like ‘'does player age equate to more wins''. Grow your football IQ! Qlik to see the fascinating facts and figures you can find in this World Football Fan App. Get the app now by going to http://www.qlikpower.com/kick-it-qlik-it/
QlikPower is the leading Professional Services and Implementation Partner for QlikView, the fastest growing Business Intelligence product in the world.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Wed, Jun 09, 2010 @ 09:02 AM
ThedaCare, the largest healthcare provider and employer in Northeast Wisconsin, has gained actionable insights into disease management, patient flows and financial management using QlikView. The deployment to 1,200 business and clinical users strengthens ThedaCare's commitment to employer plan purchasers and 225,000 patients served annually. As a data intensive business, the organization uses QlikView to analyze more than 110 million rows of data each day. ThedaCare recovered its entire investment in QlikView's analytics software prior to completing its full rollout this spring.
"QlikView dramatically reduces the time to answer business and clinical questions," said Brian Veara, ThedaCare's Manager of Decision Resources. "It is helping ThedaCare transition from standard static reporting to a truly analytical environment where any information can be rapidly accessed, analyzed and viewed exactly as needed. This capability is critical to fulfilling our mission to cost effectively improve the health of our community."
Using QlikView, clinicians now perform disease management analysis in seconds versus the hours, days and weeks they previously had to wait with traditional business intelligence tools. Executives and analysts can rapidly gain information for tracking, analyzing, forecasting, controlling and reporting financial and operational performance.
The new QlikView capabilities enable ThedaCare to explore data in its Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system and patient management systems as never before with more robust and flexible analytics applications. Examples include:
- Disease Management applications analyze the root causes for patient outcomes and KPIs for a wide variety of preventive care programs such as immunizations, disease screenings, LDL and blood pressure control, hypertension, anticoagulation medication management and tobacco cessation.
- Patient Care Benchmarks present aggregate information on how clinical teams and doctors perform and how patients respond to treatments
- Service Performance Metrics provide details on lab turnaround times, call center activity and appointment scheduling.
- Patient Flow Analysis to better understand and plan for how patients enter, use and exit the ThedaCare system. This not only helps the availability and delivery of care, but pinpoints need/risk/reward of expanding a facility, opening a new clinic or offering a new type of service.
- Financial Analysis, in addition to general ledger, AR aging and system-wide financial reporting, improves managing payer mix and physician volumes, negotiating contracts, and controlling expenses down to the cost center level.
ThedaCare will use QlikView to support its Lean Management practices throughout its organization. Planned projects include leveraging the new accessibility to its Electronic Medical Records system for creating decision-support innovations that will further improve healthcare value.
"Healthcare organizations spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to access and use information for decision support, revenue cycle management, evidence-based medicine, medical records management and supply chain management. The best way to improve care delivery and control costs is to streamline information processes, just like ThedaCare and hundreds of other healthcare providers worldwide are doing with QlikView," said Tim Wassman, President of QlikTech Americas.
ThedaCare chose QlikView when its data volumes outgrew existing reporting tools. To simply upgrade reporting based on traditional technology would have meant a considerable capital investment in software licenses and hardware, and would have continued burdens on IT staff. QlikView provided a more affordable path to simple and flexible access to information with little or no end user dependence on IT.
About ThedaCare
ThedaCareTM is the largest healthcare provider and employer in Northeast Wisconsin with more than 5,400 employees at 43 sites, serving more than 225,000 unique patients in a 14-county area. The extensive ThedaCare community health system includes four hospitals, a primary care practice with 120 physicians at 23 sites, a 24-hour call service, comprehensive senior care (home health services, assisted living, skilled nursing facility, home hospice and residential hospice), customized healthcare solutions for area employers, joint ventures with other area healthcare providers and partnerships with area physicians.
Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, May 14, 2010 @ 11:31 AM
Human Inference, the European leader in data quality solutions have partnered with QlikView to ensure customers have a proven platform to cleanse data for every business intelligence project in an organization.
With QlikView, customers can consolidate data from various sources to produce a single view for analysis. Input of data from many sources can always constitute potential risks. Whether the data originates from CRM applications, financial applications, or other external data suppliers; there is usually a wide variety in content, format and the syntactic and semantic validity within these different data sources. Additionally, the data may be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated or otherwise divergent. And there is always the danger of unintended double registrations. Human Inference establishes input control which enables users to check whether the intended input data already exists in a database. In addition, the input data will -if necessary- be corrected, completed and standardized.
"Our partnership with QlikTech offers great value to both our customers and partners," says Sabine Palinckx, CEO of Human Inference. "QlikView's analysis capabilities enable our customers to gain fast and clear insight in a variety of data sources. On the other hand, I definitely believe that a strong and intelligent data quality proposition is essential in BI. QlikView customers can benefit from our expertise and track record in this field. Trusted data is key."
QlikView's in-memory technology offers the fastest way to gain insight from data trapped in back end systems because it frees users from the traditional disk-based BI requirement of long, costly data integration projects. QlikView provides access to all your data sources: operational applications such as Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com; databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle underlying custom applications; data in traditional disk-based BI warehouses and cubes; data behind web services; and local data such as spreadsheets.
"The integrity of the data that goes into a QlikView application affects the accuracy and usefulness of the resulting analysis." said Anthony Deighton, Senior Vice President of Products, QlikTech. "We encourage customers to take advantage of the Human Inference solution, which is based on natural language processing and contains the core knowledge and interpretation to provide the best quality data possible. We want the simplicity and ease of the QlikView experience to start at the point when users are putting data into the system so they will be delighted with the trusted results it delivers."
About QlikPower
QlikPower is the leading QlikView Business Intelligence Solutions Partner for the UK and Ireland market.
We provide QlikView Licences and Support at the most competitive prices and a top quality Professional Services team to deliver the best value consultancy training and support. Qlik here to contact us now
Posted by Liam Haran on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 @ 07:49 AM
QlikView in-memory business intelligence has moved in on
Cognos PowerPlay like the
iPhone has moved in on the old brick mobile phones with attached antennas. PowerPlay was one of the world's leading OLAP based analysis tools. However, it was also originally developed back in 1990. For old technology it functioned, but new needs and higher demands were developed, similar to the evolution of mobile phones. QlikView in-memory was created out of these demands. As businesses changed, as requirements increased, and data became more complex, technology improved to meet these needs. Unbelievably PowerPlay is still being used by some organisations today; so why the ‘perceived' loyalty?
As a former Cognos partner, I know of many reasons:
- A large economic investment was probably made in the product originally
- It took a long time to implement and ‘bed down' the original solution and there is no appetite to go through that pain again. Upgrades are difficult enough.
- The traditional Cognos rivals like Business Objects, SAS, Hyperion and Microsoft all have similar offerings using the same OLAP based technology, so why switch horses!
But the software does have its limitations:
- Creating OLAP cubes is an iterative process that takes considerable time, requires specialist skills and involves significant cost. Consequently it's often restricted to Sales and Finance only. Surely other department have important data too. Just try adding another data source.
- Unlike in-memory business intelligence, cube builds often take many hours and are usually built overnight or at the weekend, so real time reporting is not possible. Can you really afford to wait?
- Business user requests to create alternative drilldown paths or change hierarchies must be referred to I.T. and seldom are prioritised, leading to frustration and low expectations
- The staff originally trained have moved on so innovation is scant, resulting in a ‘it's not broken so don't fix it' mentality
In-memory business intelligence gives you the flexibility and ease of use technology to analyze your data when and how you need it. To better understand the challenges of businesses today, and how decision-making and data analysis has changed since the purchase of your business intelligence tool register for "how much is your business intelligence tool costing" you and learn how you can fix the current issues that your company may be challenged with today.
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Posted by Noel Shannon on Fri, Apr 16, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
QlikView's growing market share can be measured in many ways but it's in the Social Media that we can see the most dramatic results.
In case we didn't already realise the growing importance of Social Media for promoting our products and services just consider the following chart:-
This shows that in the last 182 days Twitter was responsible for 64% of all Social Media Activity for QlikView. This compares with News at 18%, Blogs at 14% and Forums at 4%.
This shows the importance of Twitter for brand recognition.
By using SiliconCloud's Internet Marketing tools you can optimise your traffic, convert into leads and engage with the social media. www.siliconcloud.com
QlikPower is the leading QlikView Business Intelligence Solutions Partner for the UK and Ireland market.
We provide QlikView Licences and Support at the most competitive prices and a top quality Professional Services team to deliver the best value consultancy training and support. Qlik here to contact us now