S2E5 - Big, Bad Data: How B.I. Is Adapting to Overcome Challenges Posed by Unstructured Data with Heather Hill

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Gareth Cosker, Surface Commercial Executive at Microsoft, joins the show to share his background in IT and how he was able to develop a sustainability-focused application using Low-Code No-Code tools. Gareth speaks to the tool Squirrel365 and praises its ease of use and simplicity. Gareth also shares some of the results he was able to yield and speculates on the future of business intelligence applications.Key Takeaways01:03 – Gareth Cosker joins the show to talk about his IT background and how his career path led him to a unique role at Microsoft05:07 – Sustainability and a recent application Gareth developed using Low-Code No-Code tools09:01 – Learning how to use Squirrel13:27 – Gareth speaks to some of the results of his application and what’s next17:39 – Why Gareth chose Squirrel36519:45 – Gareth speculates on the future of dashboard applications22:48 – Microsoft’s growth mindsetTweetable Quotes“Now I still operate within the public sector, which is where my heart is and where I think technology can drive the biggest impact, whether that’s in hospitals, front line workers, counsels, those sort of establishments.” (03:25) (Gareth)“I’ve always said about business intelligence that the aim should be for people to get in, get what they need, get out, and get on with their job.” (11:06) (Donald)“For me I had a very specific use case. I wanted to present to a customer - which we would traditionally fdo via PowerPoint - and I needed a tool that integrated into that. So, I reached out to colleagues at Microsoft to establish if we have this. There were various creative ways that we would be able to import that into there, but it kinda didn’t give me that visual representation that I needed. Squirrel was purely down to ease of use and how simple for me to keep that kind of backend app going. And the plug-in feature in PowerPoint is really, really simple.” (18:39) (Gareth)“Wouldn’t it be great if you were on a slide and you could just talk to that slide and it would update that data?” (21:16) (Gareth)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukGareth’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethcosker/?originalSubdomain=ukSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Ziv Barzilay, Director, Products & Engineering at Salesforce, joins the show to expound on the remarkable innovations he’s been working on at Salesforce. Ziv focuses specifically on the Squirrel business application he’s been able to integrate into the organization and the astounding results he’s already achieved less than one year after launch. Ziv discusses engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption, design strategies and what he believes the future holds for similar business intelligence solutions at Salesforce.Key Takeaways01:03 – Ziv Barzilay joins the show to talk about his background and the exciting project he’s working on at Salesforce05:38 – Tips for engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption09:27 – Ziv speaks to the type of designs they’ve utilized to simplify their offerings11:37 – Donald and Ziv speak to the value of the tool Squirrel15:51 – How Ziv’s colleagues at Salesforce view Squirrel18:42 – Creating new business cases and identifying value drivers20:18 – Where Ziv sees the future of business applications such as Squirrel21:37 – Donald and Paul take a moment to praise the remarkable innovations Ziv and his team have been able to achieve at SalesforceTweetable Quotes“It wasn’t easy in the beginning. We went through different design approaches and finally we were able to balance between ‘How do we capture, as much as possible, use cases and still provide a more intuitive UI that Account Executives can actually use themselves. And we were actually very successful because we have about 3,000 AEs using the tool right now and we were able to touch over a quarter of a billion dollars of annual contract value.” (04:31) (Ziv)“Squirrel is very powerful in terms of almost every property in every component can be connected to a formula. So, the user interface is now fully dynamic based on user conditions. So, we were able to do almost everything we wanted to do with the UI. And, another advantage is that, when we worked with our stakeholders and we got a lot of feedback, we were able to quickly implement new ideas and requirements because of the ease of use. Squirrel is very easy to implement or change things and deploy that to production. It was very simple.” (12:38) (Ziv)“It doesn’t look like B.I. or a dashboard. People look at it as a full-blown application end-to-end.” (16:23) (Ziv)“Each business case produces hundreds of data points which we can’t get elsewhere from any third-party company. And now we generate our own benchmark, which we can use for product management, product marketing, roadmap, and other areas in the company.” (19:59) (Ziv)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukZiv’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/zbarzil/?originalSubdomain=ilSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Rob Scott, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Smart WFM, joins the show to explore the consumerization of business intelligence solutions and how Human Resource departments across the globe need to leverage these solutions, along with data, to drive value and be successful. Rob discusses the unique mix of business, psychology, technical, and HR experience he brings to his role at Smart WFM. Finally, Rob provides real-world examples of how users are becoming empowered by B.I. tools and speculates on what the future holds for business intelligence.Key Takeaways01:00 – Rob Scott joins the show to explain how his background in Psychology, Technology and Business Economics has played a key role in his current role at Smart WFM06:48 – Technology is not a slave08:26 – The consumerization of business systems12:50 – Simplicity vs. complexity16:09 – Why choice of technology is paramount18:47 – Examples of users being empowered by B.I. tools26:27 – Data integration in the HR worldTweetable Quotes“This is not just an HR issue. The combination of the human mind and technology spans across all forms of business. And in my current COO role, I see that all the time. It doesn’t matter what part of the business you’re in; how we engage with technology is becoming more and more important.” (06:31) (Rob)“The notion that digitization is all about empowering employees to do more with the technology, not have more technology, is a fundamental shift that’s taking place.” (11:41) (Rob)“Design is quite important. And, I think it’s a future skill for any part of the organization where you have capacity to create more personalized technology. Most HR systems and HR vendors have gone down the path of trying to think of every potential option that may be required with building a feature. The problem with that is that very often people look at all these bells and whistles and go, ‘Let me see if I can find a problem that this can solve.’ And the problem may not exist.” (15:08) (Rob)“For me, this is why I think exposing HR people to easy tools where they can literally create stuff for themselves is something that I think is going to take on a life of its own. And once people understand that and understand how it can integrate with current technology platforms they use, they’ll see the value of being able to do something really quickly and automatically build out that experience they’re trying to build for their employees.” (18:16) (Rob)“The one thing that the HR world is coming to terms with is that they have to deal with data.” (26:27) (Rob)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukRob’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/robscottinsyd/?originalSubdomain=auSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Santi Becerra, Senior Director of Augments Analytics at Tableau, joins the show to explore Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Analytics. Santi speaks to the evolution of data visualization, explains its importance in the B.I. industry, and speculates on its future. Santi provides some insights into the work he and his team have done at Tableau and shares an interesting belief he has about the future of business intelligence.Key Takeaways01:01 – Santi Becerra joins the show to talk about the work he’s doing with Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), and Machine Learning (M.L.)09:38 – Searching for a breakthrough solution11:23 – Santi breaks down Analytics and speaks to the role that machines will play in the future of Analytics18:00 – Data visualization23:36 – An interesting trend in gaming25:01 – Santi shares an interesting belief about the future of Business IntelligenceTweetable Quotes“I think across the board augmented analytics, the part of the portfolios that encompasses this, have not hit a home run yet. But I don’t think it’s because users aren’t ready to receive relevant, automated, timely insights in an automatic fashion. I just think we have more to go.” (05:08) (Santi)“We need to start providing more domain specific insights.” (10:49) (Santi)“One of the things I’m excited about with Tableau is that being a part of Salesforce, now we’re linked to a company that has specific solutions, right? Like the Marketing Cloud, the Sales Cloud and so there’s data repositories in there that already have, to some degree, a fixed schema and, to some degree, are already domain specific. Maybe it’s why all the independent analytics vendors have gotten bought by these companies because I think now it’s a really big advantage. Now we can tap into those schemas and, presumably, the teams that are managing that could enrich those schemas.” (15:16) (Santi)“It’s being able to take this information that people really need and rather than having to look for it, just inject it into their workflows and everyday lives so that they can’t help but be more efficient in what they do.” (29:25) (Donald)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukSanti’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/santibecerra/Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today, Donald MacCormick, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, and Joshua Tapley, Senior Director of Data Visualization at Comcast, join the show to share their experiences with Data Literacy, Self-Service, and Data Visualization. Joshua speaks to the importance of creating data interfaces that are both highly intuitive and fun. Donald provides his outlook on why terms like data literacy can mean incredibly different things to different individuals. Finally, Donald and Joshua share final thoughts on the need to get data into the hands of people who need it when they need it.Key Takeaways00:44 – Joshua Tapley joins the show to share his background in data visualization and his role at Comcast  06:31 – Donald and Joshua share their thoughts on self-service  10:36 – Creating data interfaces that are both intuitive and fun  14:07 – Sankey templates  16:57 – Joshua speaks to some of his recent successes with self-service visualization solutions  20:43 – Donald explains why terms like data literacy, self-service and data visualization mean different things to different people  27:26 – Parting words of wisdom from Donald and JoshuaTweetable Quotes“Just as a young child can pick up an iPad and use it without instruction, our users should find everything we produce intuitive. The ability to understand intuitively is the easiest way to bridge data literacy.” (07:29) (Donald)“I think it’s really important to have good, meaningful data that is useable for people to return. We talk about ongoing user engagement, adoption of the data assets that we build. We can spend all this time and then nobody wants to use it when they get done because it wasn’t the right solution. So we spend a lot more time making sure it’s the right thing.” (11:45) (Joshua)“We live in a world online whereby if you go to a website that looks really nice, you’ll stay. There’s something about it that draws you in.” (13:22) (Donald)“Most of what people are looking for, I think, is greater transparency. So, what we’re trying to do now is tie multiple elements of the data together.” (17:34) (Joshua)“Those three topics, data literacy, self-service, and data visualization, mean incredibly different things to different people. So, data literacy to an executive is about understanding where the data comes from and understanding what they’re seeing. To an analyst, it means statistics. It means making sure that they have enough of a sample size in order to make a forecast that then their executives can trust. They’re very, very different things.” (21:04) (Donald)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Joshua’s Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-tapley/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.In this episode, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, Donald MacCormick continues to provide his insights on Business Intelligence solutions. Donald doesn’t hold back on his opinions of self-service B.I. and why it is not the answer. He provides unique and in-depth examples of why successful B.I. interfaces should require little to no effort, training or documentation from the end user. Finally, Donald provides self-service B.I. analogies ranging from the restaurant industry to the healthcare industry.Key Takeaways00:29 – Donald MacCormick joins the show for Part 2 of Exploring the Growth of End-to-End No Code Business Solutions to discuss why self-service B.I. not the answer  05:14 – The evolution of Business Objects  10:30 – Donald recalls an interesting story about self-service reporting  12:54 – The importance of tools like Tableau  14:16 – Donald speaks to self-service B.I. in the restaurant industry  19:54 – The doctor analogyTweetable Quotes“Self-service B.I. is demonstratively not the answer because we have tried it four, five, six times over. We keep trying to reinvent it.” (01:17)“The quicker you get data to people that’s meaningful to them, the more they can use that in their everyday life.” (03:41)“If you ask any CEO of any organization, ‘How much time do you want your salespeople to spend on querying data?’ The answer should be ‘Zero.’” (08:03)“We no longer go out and fish for our dinner. The same should be true of reporting. We’re no longer saying everybody should do everything. We’re saying there are people who are good at this who can deliver it to the end users. We should have an information supply chain so that the end users don’t need to do self-service reporting.” (12:07)“The amount of effort, training and documentation that is required to use a good B.I. interface should be about the same as is required to select and eat a pre-prepared sandwich. I.e. none.” (16:25)“When you go to your television and you want to find out what’s on tonight, what do you do? You push this button called, ‘Guide,’ and it comes up on the screen and it’s a nice way of looking at what’s on the television. It doesn’t say, ‘Here’s an at-home query tool whereby you can query any television program in the world right now.’” (22:02)Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Episode SummaryWelcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence.In this episode, Chief Strategy Officer at Squirel365, Donald MacCormick, joins the show to discuss his background in product management and product development. Donald speaks to the work he’s doing with end-to-end no code business solutions at Squirrel365 and why he believes it is critical to make these solutions easy and fast to access, utilize and implement. Donald provides his thoughts on the relationship between business intelligence and operational applications and what he sees as the future of B.I.Key Takeaways00:41 – Introducing today’s guest, Donald MacCormick, who shares his background in product management, product development and his experience working with no-code tools05:59 – Donald speaks to the work he’s doing with no-code tools at Squirrel36511:09 – The relationship between Business Intelligence and Operational Applications17:54 – Instant Return on Investment (ROI)22:05 – Donald speaks to the exciting future of B.I.Tweetable Quotes“The idea that somehow all this information people should get by having a tool and digging for themselves is not the right way to do it. We all, end users, need interfaces that are easy to use so that they can just get at this data and can use it.  I coined a phrase, ‘They should be able to get in, get what they need, get out and get on with their jobs as quickly as possible.’” (04:39)“The appreciation for how important data analytics is has grown over the years.” (07:39)“One of the first ones they did was a Covid dashboard that had to be used in the medical environment by people who were technicians, nurses, doctors. The last thing in the world these people need to do is worry about how to get data. They need an interface that minimizes the time they are in the interface and maximizes the time they are with patients.” (16:13)“One thing we have to be clear about is that these systems are never done. Business Intelligence systems are never finished because businesses keep changing. You have to accept that you’re gonna have to iterate and throw things out that you’ve done before.” (21:18)  Resources MentionedLimitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=ukSquirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Anjum Sadaqat, who shares his background in finance and the decision to start a business intelligence solutions company 08:02 – Anjum breaks down best practices for approaching B.I. solutions, including the varied yet necessary roles of finance, marketing and sales 18:09 – Anjum speaks to some of the visual B.I. application solutions his organization has worked on24:11 – Anjum discusses a project his organization is working on with the International Humanitarian City in Dubai 30:16 – The importance of having a gesture-driven mobile platform in the world of B.I. visualization 38:37 – Anjum speculates on the future of B.I. EPISODE QUOTES“One of my biggest frustrations throughout my career was that I couldn’t get the right data in the hands of the right people at the right time.” (02:04)  “I think any project in B.I. that is owned and run by the business has about a 90-100 percent chance of success.” (07:38)  “In this digital age everything’s gotta be mobile. If you’re not mobile first, people don’t want to use it.” (12:50)  “I didn’t know that Dubai was one of the largest hubs for humanitarian aid until I got into the project. And I’ve been living in Dubai the past fifteen years.” (25:10)  “We almost underestimate our potential customers or the users of B.I. I think they’re very open to being flexible, as long as there is a solution that allows them to play with things and be able to get things.” (33:54)  “I don’t think users are gonna take over our jobs. And I don’t think technology is going to eradicate us either.” (42:22) LINKS MENTIONEDLimitless BI WebsiteAnjum’s LinkedInInternational Humanitarian City Website

00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Heather Hill, who shares her background in business intelligence, highlights from her career and how she has advocated for more women in B.I. 05:33 – Heather speaks to the impact that Covid-19 has had on her personally and from a business perspective 07:51 – Heather shares her opinions on big data, the vital role it will continue to play in our future and best practices for managing and governing our data 13:05 – Heather discusses the challenges organizations face when it comes to ownership of data 16:05 – Challenges Heather has faced when moving her repository data to the cloud and how to overcome these obstacles 19:21 – Heather speculates on the prospect of doing good B.I. against unstructured data 23:44 – Heather speculates on the future of B.I. and expounds on the importance of user adoption EPISODE QUOTES“We’re still on a journey to get to the place where we can elevate our data to action.” (08:59)  “The biggest challenge is the hybrid environment. You can move your repository, your data warehouse, up to the cloud. But probably not every component of that architecture is cloud-enabled.” (16:21)  “If the journey of B.I. is to move away from a technology-focused user to a business user, then it’s hard for that user base to do B.I. on that unstructured data. I don’t think the tools are easy enough yet for the audience that we’re trying to get to.” (19:46)  “I think data storytelling is a new, hot topic of really having the folks who are telling a story with the data, rather than you having to go drive to the answers and really elevating that message to more actionable insights and actionable analytics.” (24:04)  “I think data governance is becoming more and more important as people are struggling.” (26:17)LINKS MENTIONEDLimitless BI WebsiteHeather’s LinkedIn

00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Harvey Smith, who speaks to his background in information technology and business intelligence 05:38 – Harvey expounds on the work he’s done at Holman Strategic Ventures, including their latest app, LYNKD and their shared vehicle subscription concept, Flexdrive 17:24 – Harvey speaks to the resounding impact that Covid-19 has had on his organization and their clients’ businesses 21:13 – Harvey’s thoughts on how the shift towards a gig economy is impacting business intelligence 24:37 – The work Harvey has done with predictive and artificial intelligence (A.I.) solutions 30:01 – The process of hiring talented developers, programmers and other subject matter experts 32:48 – Harvey speculates on what the future of B.I. applications will look like EPISODE QUOTES“Basically we [Holman Strategic Ventures] build products and we look for opportunities adjacent to the core. And that’s been our mission for the last three years.” (06:37)  “Imagine that you don’t want to lease, you don’t want to buy a vehicle. You just need a vehicle just for a certain amount of time and you don’t want to rent a vehicle. You could actually subscribe to a vehicle for the type of use you wanted.” (12:25)  “Particularly, when you look at the FedExs, the Amazons of this world, they’re part of a gig economy. And those vehicles have to be up. If that vehicle’s down, then packages aren’t being delivered on time.” (16:37)  “When you’ve got people doing work for you remote – whether it’s Lyft drivers, snow plow drivers, lawn care, housesitting – it’s crucial to have the data to give you the comfort that it’s being managed correctly. It truly is management by metrics now.” (22:02)  “It’s also critical that you understand and bring some real world experience to the data because you can make data fit any story that you want.” (28:02) LINKS MENTIONEDLimitless BI WebsiteLink to LYNKD AppHarvey’s LinkedIn