recommended on business analytics and business intelligence | digital transformation | by Iver van de Zand

May 27, 2018

SAP surprises you and me everytime. And it happened again by answering the customer's query on how they can further accelerate value creation: SAP now introduces the Intelligent Enterprise suite. Have a look at the enclosed whitepaper explaining what this can mean to all of us. Nice !!

February 19, 2018

Get your copy of this new paper to understand the impact of Machine Learning on Business Intelligence and analytics, and the adoption and success of its application to date. This is the output of recent research by Computing Magazine, dated February 2018, following a survey of approximately 110 business decision makers across a range of mid and large-scale enterprises.

January 08, 2018

The dashboard at hand is supposed to provide insights into the new Lumira 2.x features: The new composites, the integration of offline data and the adaptive containers are most important to note. Hence, this demo aims at showing how these features work in combination. Moreover, it serves as an inspiration and can be regarded as a template. Data used in dashboard is dummy data only. Visualizations have been chosen randomly to show a variety of chart types (e.g. radar, tag cloud, doughnut). The chosen type may therefore not match the type actually recommended for use for a specific KPI. Feel free to visit this blog regularly to stay up-to-date with the new Lumira innovations. The lumx-file can be downloaded at the end of the page.

November 06, 2017

Excellent new survey presented by IDC on the exact value analytics and data have to the era of Digital Transformation. Digital transformation has become a board- level initiative at many companies. This board

-level mandate comes from the realization that most industries have reached the point of diminishing

returns for using cash hoards to increase dividends, buy back stock, or make acquisitions to keep

stock prices propped up. The opportunity for real growth, up to $20 trillion over the next five years by

IDC estimates, combined with the threat of new, digitally savvy competitors is driving established

enterprises to invest in digitally centric business models. A key part of this investment is being focused on data and analytics

September 26, 2017

SAP announced it acquired Gigya

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Gigya's customer identity and access management platform helps companies build digital relationships with their customers. Its platform allows companies to manage customers' profile, preference, opt-in and consent settings, with customers maintaining control of their data at all times. Customers opt in and register via Gigya's registration-as-a-service, which addresses changing geographical privacy issues and manages compliance requirements such as the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Gigya currently manages 1.3 billion customer identities in order to build identity-driven relationships for its enterprise clients.

September 25, 2017

Systems that continuously "Learn" a the real innovation when it comes to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. These are systems that get stronger every time they are used. See how that works today.

August 01, 2017

The bubble around Big Data has assuredly started to burst and it remains the driving force behind many ongoing waves of digital transformation, including artificial intelligence, data science and the Internet of Things (IoT). SAP has been developing Data Management solutions over the past decades and they have released SAP VORA (formerly known as SAP Hana Vora), which provides enriched interactive analytics on Big Data stored in Hadoop. Vora is basically a query engine with in-memory capabilities and it plugs into the Apache Spark execution framework and helps to combine Big Data with enterprise data in a fast and simple manner.

Learn everything you need to know around BigData, it's definitions and its surroundings. Superb article by Abyson Joseph

July 24, 2017

Today SAP announced their guided learning series for Analytics Cloud. Anyone considering or starting with Analytics Cloud can benefit from this guided learning providing a quick start and some clearly explained basic principles. Very useful for those exploring SAP Analytics Cloud.

July 23, 2017

You can't have missed the announcement of the SAP Leonardo. Not a product this time, yet a system composing of building blocks in Data Intelligence, Blockchain, BigData, Analytics, IoT and Machine Learning. Now there is a very detailed road-map available on Leonardo. Study it here: it provides a tremendous detail and a good insight if you are interested in Leonardo. Highly recommended

May 30, 2017

As eager as you I started playing around with a beta of the upcoming SAP Lumira 2.0. This product is the convergence of SAP Lumira and SAP Design Studio and brings them together on one server including new interfaces, functionality and features. And they didn't regret doing so: the interoperability between SAP Lumira 2.0 Discovery and SAP 2.0 Designer is just great and fills a gap we have seen for so many years on the market.

March 07, 2017

The CompleteStream Leading Insights conference organized from March 27th - 28th promises to be a very interesting one. I am lucky enough to be invited to speak about data visualization and end user adoption, but am also part of the experts panel answering any analytics related questions from the audience. Find the full agenda here.

March 06, 2017

In memory platforms help with innovative business analytics since the allow for real-time and online insights. This IDC report explains the business value that comes with real-time analytics and is a must-read. Digital Transformation is at its core with real-time insights and if you want to stay ahead of your competitors there is no doubt that this is the way to go. 

March 06, 2017

Simple and very well described overview how modern analytics benefits from in-memory platforms like SAP HANA. Learn exactly where in-memory platforms boost analytics performance and capabilities. 

February 24, 2017

You can't have missed all the writing an surveys on Machine Learning. There is no doubt Machine Learning will have great momentum in 2017. But in what sectors should we find these Machine Learning applications. Well have a look at this article based on the latest McKinsey report on Machine Learning, and find the industries that will start first.

February 23, 2017

Gartner released its 2017 magic quadrant for BI ...... BI ??? .... well, only self-service BI; be aware that Gartner's definition is solely (!) based on agile, self-service business intelligence and does not cover enterprise business intelligence with managed reporting and washboarding (to name a few). The conclusions in the report as as expected where we see the big players slowly returning into the market space. Especially Qlik is to be watched given their development efforts are declining again which might affect future readiness. Gartner will also produce a quadrant for enterprise BI; I will share the moment that that report is released.

February 19, 2017

Highly compelling document with the latest trends on BI as defined in the B.A.R.C. Trend monitor. B.A.R.C. proofs again to be a reliable and trustworthy party delivering a report that reflects correctly todays market trends in business analytics

January 25, 2017

SAP commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying SAP BusinessObjects Analytics solutions to

improve data analysis to be better informed, make better

decisions, and react to opportunities and issues more quickly

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This study will provide readers with a framework to evaluate

the potential financial impact of SAP BusinessObjects Analytics on their organizations, in areas such as data

aggregation and normalization, report and dashboard creation and management, and the use of data to identify cost savings opportunities or predict potential issues.

January 18, 2017

Big Data is the buzz word we find on all web pages these days. But <hat are the top use cases for big data analytics? Find them here described in detail.

January 18, 2017

IDC interviewed 10 organizations that are using in-memory platforms to create insights and analytical outputs to support core business operations. These organizations reported creating innovative and even disruptive use cases for in-memory platforms through real-time use of data for decision-taking and business applications. These innovations help them to compete even better.

December 22, 2016

Just before year end SAP launched SP4 of my beloved Design Studio applications with some very interesting "gifts" for under the Christmas-tree: especially working with the SP UI5 M mode is completely reviewed and bettered. Also the templates got enhancements and there is a lot to tell on the GEO side. I tried it already, and if you are a fan, you gotta download SP4 immediately.

December 08, 2016

The regular visitor of this website noticed me speaking about the embedded GEO capabilities of the likes Lumira and WebIntelligence. So why still opt for a separate GEO extension package. Vincent Dechandon explaines in this brilliant post.

December 05, 2016

Galigeo this week announced it's G17 release of their GEO suite for SAP BusinessObjects. It brings even more than expected amongst importing GEO data yourself, data flow maps and a self-service facility. The product is second to none when it comes to GEO reporting within the domain of business intelligence. I have used Galigeo for more than 3 years now, and I love the product. Stronngly recommended

December 02, 2016

Data Lakes explained in this wonderful article where the author uses the anology of music files. Some explanatory diagrams make it easy to understand the concepts of Data Lakes. Watch especially the important role of governance here. Part One of the series is also worth a read and can be found here

November 30, 2016

SAP launched version 2.4 of SAP Analysis for Office; the tool for live browsing and analyzing of SAP BW or SAP HANA. And they surprise us again with some highly useful features. Have a look at this artcile together with a tutorial video showing anything that is new in Analysis for Office 2.4

November 28, 2016

Gartner released their overview of the Digital trends for 2017. Digitization all the way. This could have been SAP's roadmap if you go through it. All of the trends mentioned are part of my day-to-day environment and I see the progress al around me. The good news for us "passionate analytics people" is that analytics relates to each individual trend mentioned.

November 27, 2016

Today SAP released wave 23 of SAP BusinessObjects Cloud. Again they succeeded in bringing in a number of enhancements and new features. One I like is the feature to ensure a dimension is automatically colored exactly the same in any visualization it is used in. Talking consistency and clarity! Well done. Read the full article for all enhancements and new features of this wave.

November 25, 2016

Roland share his insights on the future of data warehousing. He makes a lot of strong points amongst bringing the different initiatives of BI, agile and big data way closer together. Absolute worth a read and a comment !

November 21, 2016

Though I doubt every one is as much a trend as being suggested, this overview gives a fairly good insight on what a the key elements companies focus on with their Artificial Intelligence projects

November 21, 2016

The SAP Hana Cloud Platform (HCP) rocks. It is utilized as core system for IoT, but it is also the platform where - for example - SAP BusinessObjects Cloud runs on. In this artcile you can learn how you can connect on premise SAP Lumira to HCP by using the HCP connector. Stunn,ing and very useful.  

November 20, 2016

One of the best articles I have seen is this overview on everything you need to know on BW/4HANA. What is it, what does it support, what do you need, how does it compare to BW for HANA and many more. All in ONE big, comprehensive overview with various links to key resources. Don't miss it.

November 19, 2016

Predictive Analytics 3.1 is now General Available. The product evolved into a suite with stunning machine learning capabilities. You gotta read this blog providing all the what's new elements including roadmaps and more

November 19, 2016

Check out my new webpage section on freely to use open source data sets. The majority is Big Data and Data Science related. I have the same issue as all of you: constantly looking for good source data when developing and testing data analytics. So it finally pushed my to create this overview and hopefully it is of use to you.

November 17, 2016

This blog addresses two common questions with regards to modelling data in SAP BusinessObjects Cloud based off csv/xlsx file data.

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1. How do you schedule file uploads into the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud?

2. How you do upload new master data into your model, once you’ve already created your model and already added master data into it?

November 13, 2016

Wow, five stories on what Digital Transformation already is doing. These days it seems that we are witnessing waves of extreme disruption rather than incremental technology change. While some tech news stories have been just so much noise, unlikely to have long-term impact, a few are important signals of much bigger, longer-term changes afoot.

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From bots to blockchains, augmented realities to human-machine convergence, a number of rapidly advancing technological capabilities hit important inflection points in 2016. We looked at five important emerging technology news stories that happened this year and the trends set in motion that will have an impact for a long time to come.

November 13, 2016

Carmen Choy again blogging about what's new in BusinessObjects Cloud 2016.22. SAP blows us away with the speed and content of their BusinessObjects Cloud enhancements. What we can learn at least from it, is how serious SAP is on this product.

November 13, 2016

TechTarget proofs to be a very well informed website constantly posting on the latest ICT innovations. This time they wrote a very informative article on the latest innovations and enhancements for SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom as announced during the latest SAP TechEd in Barcelona.

November 05, 2016

Wow! BusinessObjects Cloud and Digital Boardroom evolve to the absolute number ONE analytics components with second to none functionality and capabilities. If "actionable insights" exist in person, here they are. It is amazing what the SAP development teams are currently delivering. I have seen quite a bit in business analytics over the last few years, but this beats them all.

November 05, 2016

Again a nice and informative article by colleague Timo Elliott explains what machine learning exactly is and why the hype has started now. Learn why every analytics application will have predictive analytics capabilities embedded and how the factory model bring artificial intelligence to the end user

November 05, 2016

In last TECHED 2016 at Las Vegas, SAP announced the new BI Launchpad for BusinessObjects. It was worth the wait. The new launched looks stunning and is simple and intuitive. All Fiori based

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BI Launchpad is the web portal for the users, called Infoview in XI versions has evolved with few improvements from XIR2, XI3.x to BIP 4.x. But the most important change, presumably for the 4.2 SP4, is a new and full redesign using Fiori style.

November 02, 2016

Have a look at one of the latest B.A.R.C. surveys on pervasive business intelligence. Usage of BI is becoming more pervasive, but remains a long way from being truly widespread in companies, according to The BI Survey 15. Following two years of zero growth, the median percentage of employees using BI in companies increased by more than 2% on last year to over 13%. From a sample of 2,071 responses, 45% of participants say their companies have less than 10% of employees using BI.

October 30, 2016

Release 2016.20 of SAP BusinessObjects Cloud is now available and again SAP delivered on its promises with strong new functionality: there is now import-connectivity to OData sources as well as predictive forecasting. On the visualization side there are new features for story-wide formatting, as well as further alignment towards the IBCS standards (I like them, you know!). BusinessObjects Cloud supports the closed loop portfolio so also planning capabilities are embedded with now embedded category and date selection for currency conversion.

October 28, 2016

Self-service BI enjoys it's momentum but brings new priorities to IT. How about people still having complex questions or consider machine-learning? It is an interesting challenge that is well described in this artcile

October 19, 2016

By 2020, algorithms will positively alter the behavior of more than 1 billion global workers global workers.
Contextualization algorithms have advanced exponentially to include a variety of behavioral interventions such as psychology, social neuroscience and cognitive science. Human beings tend to be emotionally charged and factually drained, causing them to be irrational. Algorithms can positively alter that behavior by augmenting their intelligence with the large collective memory bank containing knowledge that has been socialized and put to the test. This will help workers "remember" anything or be informed of just-in-time knowledge that they have never even experienced, leaving them to objectively complete the task at hand but also to better appreciate life as it unveils. Use of algorithms can raise alarms of "creepiness," however, when used to effect positive outcomes, it can bring about changes to multiple industries.

October 14, 2016

SAP CEO Bill McDermott teaches us how important it is to read the room; to understand your audience. This is an absolute must-read article where Bill McDermott explains how he - as an USA Citizen - runs a German top company. I have read his book "Winner's Dream" where he goes into this topic more detailed. I can recommended the book to anyone. Impressive personality !

October 13, 2016

As you have seen in my post on ThingBook, analyzing IoT devices gets utterly important the next few years. This demo focusses on analyzing the data-interchange with the central IoT platform.

October 12, 2016

MySmartApp is a really interesting app that leverages SAP Design Studio and allows users to quickly create analytics applications themselves. The product is rapidly evolving and recently got a lot of new features amongst a library to store, share and collaborate on dashboard applications created with MySmartApp. Some of the latest features are in this post.

October 13, 2016

In governance, risk and compliance (GRC), like in other area of the business, we’re witnessing a strong trend towards Cloud-based technology offerings, particularly in the area of compliance and internal control systems. High promises  of efficiency gains, better quality in compliance processes, and even increased performance for the business are being made. It almost sounds as if—by a sort of magic—moving to the Cloud would solve the pains of managing compliance and controls that too many companies today still  experience (too many manual tasks, high costs, insufficient assurance, and so on). Obviously, this seems worth taking a closer look, beyond the promised “wonders” at what is really provided. Since  more and more companies plan to adopt a Cloud-based solution for their compliance and controls, it’s important to ascertain  whether the most critical needs will actually be addressed.

October 12, 2016

Think a simple scenario like this: "A small clothing boutique sells an eclectic mix of clothing and accessories. Their clientele tends be middle age women. Business is steady, but not growing significantly and they are looking for opportunities to attract new customers to aid growth. While they know of “the regulars” who frequent the store, they’re interested in getting factual data about the overall demographics of their neighborhood. This information will help them identify potential customers in the area so that they can tailor their products and marketing to that target audience.", and see what can be done today.

October 03, 2016

This article covers some of the latest new features and enhancements in SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom release 2016.19. Please refer to the release notes for more details.

Highlights of this release include:

• Self-service configuration of SAML authentication

• Multiple enhancements for variance

• Create geospatial models from live HANA calculation views

• Automatic scaling of non-spreading dimensions  with weighted spreading

September 28, 2016

Highly engaging interview where the next generation of analytics is discussed by Jayne Many (SAP Global VP BI) and Stefan Sign (SAP VP Analytics development).

September 21, 2016

We are so often asked to compare SAP BusinessObjects BI to the new niche vendors. Over here it is done in a very well balanced and honest article. You should definately read this !

September 21, 2016

SAP recently launched the SP3 pack of WebIntelligence 4.2 with some very useful features. They are all listed down in this article

September 18, 2016

As you probably have noticed reading the website, SAP Lumira is positioned as a self-service BI tool. One of the things to take into account when using self-service, is of course managing it's Governance.In itself, self-service tools provide a lot of freedom to end users. If governance is not managed very well, end users may have a lot of possibilities to for example make queries that do no tmake sense or use a lot of resources. Furthermore one of course needs to be sure that an end users can use what he/she is entitled to use. This article tells you all about the very well defined governance capabilities the CMS (Central Management Console) has to take full control on everything.

September 10, 2016

You all definately have seen the stiff competition on winning the end user game, that is already going on for several years. Various tools try to win the market coming up with new feature or better integration. There has been written so many things on this topic, and I am part of that writing. I am a fan of the SAP BI integration, but that doesn't see other tools have good aualities too. Below is another article trying to compare the various key players.

September 10, 2016

Formally known as the modeler, the predictive factory of SAP Predictive Analytics is a stunning, but easily to use framework to really quickly create your predictive models and start leveraging the outcome. Must see !

September 07, 2016

To determine the status of Analytics and Business Intelligence in the Cloud, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) embarked on an end-user research study to look at the current state of cloud- based analytics. For this research, EMA invited pre-quali ed business stakeholders and information technology professionals to complete an extensive web-based survey. As part of the survey, 257 panelists responded to an invitation to provide their insights on cloud-based analytics and business intelligence strategies and implementation practices. To o er a neutral enterprise view, the respondent pool was also balanced. Business stakeholders represented 44% of respondents. Technologists were 56% of the panel. e survey was executed in November 2014 with respondents from around the world including North America and Europe. 

September 03, 2016

The latest Dresner report on Advanced Analytics has some unexpected - though highly interesting - conclusions. The report can be obtained via this link.

August 02, 2016

The B.A.R.C. institute designed this helicopter-view framzewotk when applying decision support systems. Quite remarkable is that B.A.R.C. also uses the principle of closed loop in this article. It is the closed loop from using descriptive BI data from the "past, onto predicting the future. Worth a read.

July 14, 2016

Are you new to SAP Business Intelligence and want to knwo how to start, where to download software or how to get support? Than the BI Handbook is the single thing you need.

July 06, 2016

This IDC white paper describes the current and emerging states of business analytics deployments. The broad shift from on-premises to cloud deployments has begun, and IDC expects that over the next five years, spending on cloud business analytics will grow five times faster than similar on-premises solutions. This white paper discusses drivers and some of the roadblocks of cloud-based business analytics solution deployments and highlights the offerings from SAP in this market. 

July 05, 2016

The SAP HCP Hana Cloud Platform is one of the most innovative platforms currently existing en perfectly suiting to handle IoT sensor data. Using SAP Lumira or SAP Design Studio it is very easy to connect to this HCP platform on creating analytics on streaming data services. You just need and Android or iPhone as sensor. In this article you can learn how you can try for yourself !

June 26, 2016

Everyone loves maps – we view maps on our mobile devices to get from point A to point B, discover the best route to avoid traffic, or find nearby restaurants. What has become ubiquitous in our personal lives is now electrifying our businesses because spatial data is found everyone in the enterprise.

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Now organizations, like yours, are combining spatial data and dynamic maps with business data to manage assets across a region, improve customer service on-site, assess the impact of weather or natural disasters, increase sales with location-based marketing, or optimize on-time delivery across the supply chain and more.

To help you uncover new insights from spatial data, SAP delivers a portfolio of solutions that can help you:

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• Acquire geospatial data from a wide variety of data sources using data integration and geocoding capabilities delivered via SAP HANA smart data integration and smart data quality or SAP Data Services

• Store both business and spatial data in-memory, and accelerate the speed of complex data using SAP HANA spatial data processing capabilities

• Analyze business and spatial data rapidly to improve decision making with compelling visualizations using SAP BusinessObjects Enterpriseand SAP BusinessObjects Cloud solutions

• Act on spatial insights displayed within business applications using the SAP Geographical Enablement Framework

• Deliver contextual awareness through dynamic maps to business users via PCs, laptops, and mobile devices.

June 08, 2016

As a temporarily promotion I make my book Passionate On Analytics available for FREE. The book is an electronic iBook which can be read on an Apple iPhone or iPad device. If you don't have one, you can download a PDF version here.

May 26, 2016

SAP continues to further better and simplify their analytics portfolio. The convergence of SAP Lumira and SAP Design Studio is part of that. With the convergence full data discovery and enterprise authored dashboarding are combined in ONE tool. On top, both components with inherit eachother's strenghts: offline connectivity for dashboards and online BW connectivity for data discovery. Tis will change the analytics landscape permanently. 

May 23, 2016

The BARC BI Survey 2016 is open now, and I believe every analytics or business intelligence professional should participate in the survey. It only takes 10 minutes of your time. The results are valuable to all of us, and the more people attend, the better the quality of the results.

May 11, 2016

I see a lot of vendors looking at the BI market place for BI tools while solely focussing on the visualization aspects of the tools. They completely pass cost of ownership, governance, integration into their existing platform and most of all: leveraging what they - often - already have. Read the following article and be amazed !

May 05, 2016

Apple® and SAP today announced a partnership to revolutionize the mobile work experience for enterprise customers of all sizes, combining powerful native apps for iPhone® and iPad® with the cutting-edge capabilities of the SAP HANA platformThis joint effort will also deliver a new iOS software development kit (SDK) and training academy so that developers, partners and customers can easily build native iOS apps tailored to their business needs.

May 04, 2016

Predictive Analytics plays a key role in Digital Transformation. Especially combined with in-memory platforms, we are able to really unleash the power of predictive modelling. Read why.

May 01, 2016

In a new survey, executives say senior-leader involvement and the right organizational structure are critical factors in how successful a company’s analytics efforts are, even more important than its technical capabilities or tools.

If you run a business intelligence team of some shape or form at your company, you probably have a long list of tasks to complete. You are undoubtedly beholden to multiple stakeholder groups with inconsistent skills of their own, different demands of your group, and different perspectives about how they should be served. You undoubtedly have "your own" projects to complete, some being infrastructure and some providing more direct value to users. You also may be supporting production, which we all know comes first.