The performance ideas blog

Category: Analytics

  • Mark Jeffries: “Have you invested in yourself?”

    GUESTPOST BY MARK JEFFRIES In the IT business – we have a big advantage. Very cool solutions that truly help businesses solve problems. Nice! However, that is not our challenge. The IT challenge is actually whether your target – be it client, colleague or boss – actually wants to buy YOU!  The unspoken questions become…

  • The Performance Manager

    Have you heard of the Performance Manager book? If not, you should take a look at it! The Performance Manager is a book that can provide a lot of value to you and your Business Analytics projects. Some people describe it as a ‘Recipe book for Analytics’. Mike Duncan recently blogged about designing dashboards and…

  • 4 Business Analytics events you should not miss

    Business Analytics is the number topic for most CFOs and CIOs this year. Fall is a perfect time to catch up on the latest news in this area and to learn about the latest and greatest IBM solutions. The IBM teams across the globe (including my group) are currently busy organizing and preparing four major…

  • How to build offline management dashboards

    A few months ago, I sat right next to a guy on a plane. Once we were up in the air, he pulled out a big stack of paper reports. He equipped himself with a ruler, a marker, a pencil and a calculator. All that on the tiny fold-down table in economy class. Didn’t look…

  • 8 ideas for delivering a better demo

    Demos are a critical part of every business analytics implementation. There are frequent occasions during any project where we have to show present tools & processes: At the beginning, we might show the new software to our users to educate them. Later on we might want to review a prototype and we need to solicit…

  • THINK YELLOW!

    The 2011 edition of the Tour de France is in its final week. No matter if you are a cycling fan or not, Le Tour continues to fascinate millions of people around the globe. Few people appreciate that it is actually one of the three largest sporting events in the world (behind the Olympics and…

  • Eagles and AQ Leaders

    This past weekend, my friend Bernhard took me to an amazing place in the Bavarian Alps. High up in the mountains above the famous town of Berchtesgaden you will find a small colony of actors. No, not your normal type of actor. Actually, birds of prey. Yes, there is a guy up there who works…

  • The new K.O. criteria for jobs?

    To be honest with you, I am still a bit puzzled. But it totally makes sense. Over the past 9 weeks, I ran into three different people that I had met through my work at IBM. They all had three things in common: They used to be a Business Analytics advocate and driver at a…

  • How to create happy business people

    “Projects could be so much fun if it wasn’t for the users.” Well, I have often heard this from different project teams. And there is some truth to this: Too many projects fail to ‘wow’ an organization because the business is disappointed about the final results. Based on my personal experience, I believe that the…

  • Why improving your AQ is critical for personal and organizational success

    Do you know your AQ? AQ stands for Analytical Quotient. It is a new measure that provides you with insights about your organization’s ability to leverage business analytics. Most importantly, AQ helps you determine how to best go about improving your capabilities. I would highly recommend taking the self-assessment test on the IBM Website. It…