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Inside the Amazing Innovation of Spotfire X

November 14, 2018 TIBCO Spotfire

Today we’re launching a new breakthrough in analytics: TIBCO Spotfire X. As we’ve shared Spotfire X with business intelligence (BI) industry analysts, many have told us that we’ve created something that’s very rare in the BI market – a truly new innovation. Why are they making that claim?

A few years ago, we set out to revolutionize the Spotfire direct manipulation model using three new technologies: natural language, artificial intelligence (AI), and streaming data. The result is the ground-breaking Spotfire X.

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Let’s start with natural language. The first innovation for Spotfire X was to bring natural language to the interface so essentially it acts like Google for your business data. For example, if you see that sales promotions in your region are doing poorly, now you can simply type: “Campaign performance by region” and be shown the factors that impact performance. So the first breakthrough of Spotfire X is the fusion of natural language query with direct manipulation for faster speed to insights.

The Spotfire team from Gothenburg

The second exciting technology we leverage in Spotfire X is artificial intelligence (AI). Today, our world generates way too much data for humans to process, so math and statistics are necessary to augment understanding. The problem is, not many of us love statistics and math! So we are bringing AI to the fingertips of non-mathematicians, to build on our new natural language capabilities.

You can see the impact of AI in every business today, even Formula One™ racing, where TIBCO once again helped Lewis Hamilton to his fifth Formula One driver’s title. A single Formula One race car generates more data points in one trip around the track than there are books in the Library of Congress. Without machine learning, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport race team would have no chance to understand which factors contribute the most to performance. Spotfire, combined with AI, helps them do that more easily than ever before. This is the second breakthrough of Spotfire X: the fusion of AI and machine learning with a human interface. Now, as you’re exploring, our algorithms are working with you and recommending what the user should look at next.

The Spotfire team from Pune

The third innovative technology we’ve built into Spotfire X is streaming data. Data in motion is the foundation of the modern enterprise nervous system: IoT data, customer interactions, and transactions are now streaming across the enterprise. Spotfire X makes it simple to connect to data in motion: just drag in a connection to streaming IoT data just like you would load an Excel spreadsheet. The insights you gain are extraordinary. Literally, with every change in the stream of data, Spotfire updates your visualizations in milliseconds. Analysts can compare live conditions to what happened yesterday, last week, or last year. Statistical models can be applied to the stream to predict what might happen next, so you can act at the speed of your business.

The Spotfire team from Paris

The disruptive possibilities of live BI are limitless. Here are a few examples that, until now, cost millions of dollars and years to implement. With Spotfire X, they can be realized in days or hours, in one easy-to-use BI tool.

In the oil and gas industry, it now takes seconds to add IoT streams from sensors in industrial equipment to Spotfire, allowing experts to anticipate and fix equipment failures before they happen, and increase production.

In banking, insurance, and retail, the ability to understand and act on risk coming from intraday operations is a matter of survival. Applying BI to millions of live transactions in real-time can identify security breaches, spot fraudulent transactions so they can be stopped, or fix non-compliant trades on Wall Street.

The Spotfire team from Seattle

Firms in the transportation, logistics, and supply chain space must automate to compete. Now any business can easily provide an intelligent digital nervous system like Melbourne Airport, where airport operations, security, and retailers can analyze data from embedded sensors to connect over 2,000 pieces of equipment, baggage handling systems, air traffic control systems, and understand passenger location. This live view of an airport allows Melbourne Airport staff to improve customer experience as they travel through the airport, assess and act on security risks in real-time, and optimize flight operations in response to changing conditions to ensure on-time operations.

This, third breakthrough of Spotfire X, Spotfire Data Streams, allows any business to gain insight into their real-time enterprise. No other BI tool today can apply this style of direct manipulation to streaming and to historical data at the same time. Only Spotfire X allows you to understand all your data as it changes and apply AI and natural language, in one gorgeous, easy-to-use tool.

The Spotfire Data Streams team from Waltham

It’s rare to work with a team that changes an industry. To the Spotfire engineering team, bravo (or, in Swedish – jättebra!). Billions of dollars are invested in BI tools every year, and you just invented something that nobody else has. Again.

To learn more, check out the webinar, Introducing Spotfire X and the A(X) Experience, and try Spotfire X for free by visiting tibco.com/spotfire-trial.

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The TIBCO Blog

Fitbits are like..

November 14, 2018 Humor

Posted by Krisgo

Fitbits are like..

via

About Krisgo

I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon

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Deep Fried Bits

Data Breaches Due to Unencrypted Information Represent a Huge Business Risk

November 14, 2018 Big Data

Townsend Security

November 13, 2018

Data breaches of unencrypted sensitive information occur often, and many are highly publicized. Businesses are thrust into the spotlight and scrutinized for scandalous lack of oversight and accountability around data security. And even though these breaches happen at the IT level, the burden and the blame for a data breach usually falls on C-level leaders such as the CEO or CIO. Customers question, “Why didn’t you protect my personal information?” and the leaders respond, “We didn’t think it would happen to us.”

Businesses must be proactive against security threats

Today business leaders need to know that security attacks are no longer a matter of “if” but “when.” Even within secure networks and behind firewalls, unencrypted sensitive data is a goldmine for hackers.

Not protecting this information with encryption is like driving a brand-new Ferrari without car insurance. You can drive as safely as you want, but you can’t control the behavior of other drivers. Just like driving without insurance, not encrypting your company’s sensitive data in a time when hackers are always trying to break into networks is taking a huge risk with both your organization’s financial resources and reputation.

Why is unprotected data a business problem?

In most organizations, a large part of the CEO’s role is to assess risk. Each day, business leaders in any given organization review and respond to financial, market, competitive, and many other types of risk. These leaders are accustomed to assessing risk in their organizations, but many are only beginning to consider the possibility of a data breach as a fundamental risk. Unprotected sensitive data leads to identity theft, fraud, and theft of financial resources from employees and customers.

Costly data breaches can happen to any business

Data breaches happen to companies of all sizes, and in both the public and private sector.

In fact, hackers will often target small to mid-sized businesses simply because those networks tend to be less secure. However, we still see large businesses that have failed to protect their customers’ data — either by not encrypting the data or failing to protect the encryption keys.

Anyone who’s been through a data breach understands the great importance of encryption and encryption key management. The costs associated with a data breach are far reaching, and include:

Fines
Forensics investigation
Credit monitoring for customers
Lost sales due to brand damage
Litigation costs

These are expenses that every organization wants to avoid. They represent huge risk in terms of actual financial costs and damage to reputation. Not considering these costs and not protecting your company and customers’ sensitive data is a failure to assess risk.

Syncsort’s Alliance Encryption and Security Suite can help your business fight back against security threats to your sensitive data. For more information, read the eBook: IBM i Encryption with FieldProc and Alliance AES/400: Protecting Data at Rest

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Syncsort Blog

Power BI Desktop November 2018 Feature Summary

November 14, 2018 Self-Service BI

We have a massive Power BI Desktop update this month. Composite models, which allow you to combine direct query and import sources together in one model, is now generally available. Two of the top feature requests on UserVoice, expand/collapse on the matrix and copy and pasting visuals between Desktop files, are also shipping this month. We are previewing a completely revamped filter pane that is highly customizable and have a ton of other product updates as well!

For a summary of the major updates, you can watch the following video:

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We are very excited to announce the release of one of the most requested visual features, the ability to expand and collapse individual row headers.

There are two ways you can expand row headers. The first is through the right-click menu. You’ll see options to expand the specific row header you clicked on, the entire level or everything down to the very last level of the hierarchy. You have similar options for collapsing row headers as well.

You can also add +/- buttons to the row headers through the formatting pane under the row headers card. By default, the icons will match the formatting of the row header, but you can customize the icons’ color and size separately if you want.

Once the icons are turned on, they work similarly to the icons from PivotTables in Excel.

The expansion state of the matrix will save with your report. It can be pinned to dashboards as well, but consumers will need to open up the report to change the state. Conditional formatting will only apply to the inner most visible level of the hierarchy. Note that this expand/collapse experience is not currently supported when connecting to AS servers older than 2016 or MD servers.

Watch the following video to learn more about expand/collapse in the matrix:

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Another frequent request we are delivering this month is the ability to copy visuals between .pbix files. With this month’s release, you can now copy a visual either through the visual’s context menu or through the standard Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut and paste it into another report through Ctrl+V.

This is very useful for anyone who builds and updates multiple reports frequently. When copying between files, formatting that has been explicitly set in the formatting pane will carry forward, and anything that is relying on a theme or the default settings will update to match the theme of the destination report.

If the fields in your model are different, you’ll see an error on the visual and a warning on the fields that don’t exist, similar to the experience you see if you delete a field in the model a visual is using. All you’ll need to do is replace the broken fields with the ones you want to use from the new model. If you are using a custom visual, you’ll also need to import it to the destination file as well.

Watch the following video to learn more about copying and pasting between .pbix files:

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Our filter pane is a very important part of any report, and we’ve been listening to all the feedback we get from the community to learn what would be the most impactful updates we could make. We’d hear that consumers won’t understand what filters are affecting a visual. Not only does the filter pane showing up as collapsed at the corner of the report making it difficult to notice, it also didn’t have enough configuration and customization options to meet all your needs when building reports. Based on all this feedback, we have a preview of a fully revamped filtering experience.

This new filter pane has many new features such as:

Hide individual filters or the entire filter pane from report consumers
Lock filters as read only for report consumers
Formatting options for the filter pane to make it feel like part of the report
Flexibility of defining default expand / collapsed filter pane at report load time for consumers
Read only view of filters affecting a visual directly on visuals

To start using this new filter pane, you will first need to enable it through the Preview features section of the Options dialog. After this, it will be enabled for all new reports.

For existing reports, you’ll additionally need to check the option under Report settings in the Options dialog.

Once the new filter pane is enabled, you’ll see it attached to the report page. It will be formatted by default based on your current report settings. This new filter pane is what your report consumers will see when you publish your report, and the older filter pane now acts as a filter editing pane. This means you can update existing filters through the new pane, but you’ll use the older filter pane to configure which filters to include.

Note: Wondering why we have two filter panes? The new filter pane gives you a taste of what your report consumers will see without publishing the report (same as any other visual in your report). In a few months, we will remove the old filter pane and the new pane will be used to add new filters as well.

To show and hide the new filter pane, you can use the eye icon next to FILTERS title of the filter editing pane. This saves with the report, so you’ll be able to completely hide the filter pane from your report consumers if you want.

You can also use the filter editing pane to lock or hide individual filter cards. As you toggle these settings in the editor, you’ll see the changes reflected in the new filter pane.

Through the formatting pane you can format both the new filter pane, and the individual filter cards. For the filter pane, you can format the background color and transparency, the font and icon colors, and the color and visibility of the left border of the pane.

You can format the filter card’s background color and transparency and border color and visibility. You’re able to format these properties for both the state when the filter is cleared (Available) and the state when the filter is set to something (Applied).

Another benefit of this new experience is that you can now see a read only view of filters that are affecting each visual. You can hover over a filter icon in the visual’s header to see filters, slicers, and cross-highlighting state that is affecting what data is showing in the visual. This new icon is on by default (provided your preview switch is checked as called out above), but of course you can turn it off for your report consumers through the visual header card in the formatting pane.

Watch the following video to learn more about the new filtering experience:

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We have lots of accessibility improvements this month in the reporting space.

First is that the selection pane is now fully accessible. This includes keyboard navigation, screen reader support and high contrast support. When using the selection pane with a keyboard, once you open the selection pane from the ribbon, your focus will move directly to the pane. From there you can tab through all the buttons on pane. When your focus is on the list, you can press F6 to "activate" the list and use up/down arrows to cycle through the list of visuals. While your focus is on an individual object in the selection pane list, you can use the following hotkeys:

Select/deselect an object – ENTER or SPACEBAR
Multi-select – CTRL+SPACE
Move an object up in the layering – CTRL+SHIFT+F
Move an object down in the layering – CTRL+SHIFT+B
Hide/show (toggle) an object – CTRL+SHIFT+S

Press tab to exit the activated list and return to the top of the pane.

The following experiences also fully support keyboard navigation, screen readers, and high contrast settings:

Q&A explorer dialog
Getting started dialog
File Menu & about dialog
Warning bar
File Restore dialog
Frowns dialog

Lastly, we are enabling you to more quickly navigate to different areas of Power BI Desktop through ctrl+F6. Instead of just jumping between visuals on a page and the page tab switcher, you can also quickly jump to whatever panes are currently visible, the view switcher on the left and the account options on the top right. You can still reach the ribbon through pressing Alt.

For quite a while now, we’ve had two different ways to dynamically color a visual’s data points depending on the visual type. Our charts had a color saturation option in the field well that gave you basic controls, and the table and matrix visuals had conditional formatting. We’ve added a ton of functionality to the conditional formatting experience for table and matrix over the last year, but the color saturation feature for cartesian charts hasn’t received much love.

That has finally changed this month, as we’ve upgraded all the visuals that previously used color saturation to have the same conditional formatting experience as table and matrix currently has. This means you’ll have access to all three types of formatting currently available: Color by color scales, Color by rules, and Color by field. As mentioned, this change impacts all visuals which previously had color saturation which includes:

All variants of column and bar charts
Funnel chart
Bubble & filled maps
Shape map (preview)
Treemap
Scatter chart

With this upgrade, you’ll notice the color saturation bucket is no longer in the field well. Instead to format, you’ll go to the Data colors card in the formatting pane. Here you can format with the color pickers as normal or select the Advanced controls option to launch the conditional formatting dialog.

Once there, you can use any of the three conditional formatting options and select OK to apply the formatting.

And that’s it! The conditional formatting colors will apply on top of whatever formatting you already have through theming and manually picking through the color pickers.

Watch the following video to learn more about conditional formatting in visuals:

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You can now ask related questions in the Q&A explorer dialog, which means that the answers to your questions can take into account the previous question’s context.

For example, you can start by asking for the products sold by Contoso.

Then you can click the Ask a related question button and ask the related question for the sales for each of those products.

You can continue to ask follow-up questions and can even change filter context, like by asking to show Fabrikam products instead.

Here are some types of follow-up questions you can ask and the phrasing to use:

Add another field – “Include brand name”
Extend filter – “For Contoso as well”
Add a filter – “what about 2015?”
Replace filters – “Show Contoso instead” or “What about for Contoso?”

Watch the following video to learn more about related questions in Q&A:

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Another major improvement this month is our preview of the new modeling view. We’ve been working on this new view for quite a while now and are very excited to share it with everyone. This new version has many new features include:

Faster performance on large models with many tables
Customize and save diagram view layouts
Multiple diagram layouts
Modeling options through the field properties pane and field list
Display folder creation
Apply common settings to multiple fields at once

Once you turn on the preview in the Options dialog, you’ll see two relationships views. You’ll be able to recognize the new preview one through a little star on the bottom right corner of the icon.

Watch the following video to learn more about the new modeling view:

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Our new composite models feature is now generally available. Thank you for all the great feedback during the preview period. It has really shaped the feature. In fact, in addition to GA-ing the feature this month, we also have an update that’s based on your feedback. We now allow relationships that are between different sources to have a cardinality of Many to 1 to reflect the actual cardinality of the data. While the relationships still have the same “weak” behavior as relationships that have a cardinality of Many-to-Many, allowing the true cardinality to be defined permits additional optimizations and clearer models.

Our modeling experiences also has accessibility improvements this month. We’ve added keyboard navigation, screen reader support, and high contrast setting support to the following experiences:

Manage relationships dialog
Edit relationships dialog
Manage roles dialog for RLS

We have three DAX updates this month. In support of our new expand/collapse feature for the matrix visual, there’s now an additional optional DrilldownFilter argument for the RollupAddIsSubtotal function and a new NonVisual function. Additionally, we’ve added the IsInScope function, which is a better way to detect hierarchy level in a measure expression. Some popular tasks you might need this for include (1) calculating child percentage of parent subtotal and (2) calculating ranks of children under different parents. You can find more information on these formulas here: ISINSCOPE, NONVISUAL, New argument for ROLLUPADDISSUBTOTAL.

The Calendar by MAQ Software custom visual is an effective way to track events within your Power BI report. Some key features include:

Grouping events based on category
Month, week, day and list views
Navigate to event details with a single click
Set workdays and hours

You can download this visual on AppSource.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Calendar by MAQ Software custom visual:

[embedded content]

The Ratings by MAQ Software custom visual lets you add ratings or scores to your reports. You can show either the average ratings or break it down over a specific category. You’re able to choose between four different shapes and between a solid and gradient fill.

Check out this visual on AppSource.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Ratings by MAQ Software custom visual:

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The Hourglass Chart by MAQ Software custom visual lets you compare category values between two scenarios, which is very useful when showing conversion rates.

With this visual you can:

Cross-highlight individual categories
Display it either horizontally or vertically
Animate individual categories on hover
Add and remove the conversion box

You can find this custom visual on AppSource.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Hourglass by MAQ Software custom visual:

[embedded content]

The Forecast Using Multiple Models by MAQ Software R custom visual allows you to forecast future values based on historical data using four different forecasting models. The models include Linear Regression, ARIMA, Exponential Smoothing, and Neural Network. You can manually adjust the parameters of the learning model, show the confidence intervals, and decide on the split point.

Try out this custom visual by downloading it from AppSource.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Forecast Using Multiple Models by MAQ Software custom visual:

[embedded content]

The Pie Charts Tree custom visual by Aritz Fancoy lets you display a tree visual with pie charts as the nodes. To create a plain tree structure all you need to do is add multiple fields to the Categories bucket in the fields list. From there you can add data labels with the Values bucket, percent of target pie charts with the Target bucket, and progress percentage with the Progress field.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Pie Charts Tree custom visual:

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This month we’re excited to release a new connector for Azure DevOps Server, allowing you to import and transform data from Azure DevOps Server in order to build Power BI reports.

The new Azure DevOps Server Connector can be found under the Online Services category within the Get Data dialog.

The PDF Files connector has been enhanced in this release to allow you to specify Start Page and End Page optional parameters, which restricts Power Query to only explore a given range of pages for discovering tables.

These parameters can be specified in the M formula generated after connecting to a PDF file: Pdf.Tables(File.Contents("c:\sample.pdf"), [StartPage=10, EndPage=11])

This month we’ve enhanced the Azure Consumption Insights connector to add Budget and Reserved Instances data.

That’s all for this month! We hope that you enjoy these updates and continue sending us your feedback. Please don’t forget to vote for other features that you’d like to see in the Power BI Desktop. For any preview features, you can always give us your feedback in our active community. You can also download the .pbix file I used, and if you’re looking for a similar design for your reports, I was using the Microsoft layout from PowerBI.Tips.

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GK Enchanted Farm fights poverty in the Philippines with NetSuite

November 14, 2018 NetSuite

Social Enterprise Incubator Uses NetSuite to Accelerate Growth for Social Enterprises and Generate Sustainable Livelihoods

Manila, PHILIPPINES—November 13, 2018—Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm, an incubator for social enterprises in the Philippines, has implemented Oracle NetSuite to support its mission to end poverty for five million families by 2024. With NetSuite, GK Enchanted Farm has improved operational efficiency and regulatory reporting for its different social business units and departments, allowing greater scale and impact for Gawad Kalinga’s 2,500 communities.

pr gkfarm GK Enchanted Farm fights poverty in the Philippines with NetSuite

Established in 2010 by Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation (GK), a Philippine-based movement aiming to end poverty, GK Enchanted Farm provides local social entrepreneurs from a variety of industries with access to the resources needed to bring their ideas to life and build a sustainable livelihood. To support its growing operations and ensure it could quickly and easily integrate data from its expanding network of social enterprises, GK Enchanted Farm selected NetSuite.

“To meet our goal of ending poverty for five million families by 2024, we needed to streamline our business processes so that we could focus on driving growth and enhancing the quality of life for local farmers,” said Shanonraj Khadka, CEO, GK Enchanted Farm. “With NetSuite at the heart of all our business processes, we’ve reduced the time spent on administrative tasks by half and can now get a complete and timely view into our operations. This makes a huge difference and will help us focus time and resources on achieving our mission.”

With NetSuite OneWorld, GK Enchanted Farm has been able to enhance decision making by creating a single and flexible platform to manage all business operations, including its network of incubated social enterprises. By creating a unified view of its operations, NetSuite gives GK Enchanted Farm a better understanding of its business performance—both overall and on granular levels—so that the NGO is able to make more accurate forecasts and ensure that it is tax compliant at all times.

“Organizations like Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm should be focusing their time and resources on realizing their vision, instead of administrative tasks,” said Hazel del Rosario-Lee, managing director, Oracle NetSuite Philippines. “We are delighted to support GK Enchanted Farm so that they can better serve social enterprises and ultimately reduce poverty in the Philippines and the rest of the world.”

About Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm
Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm is a township development model that promotes social entrepreneurship, social tourism, and social education. This global community moves to create prosperity, grow goodness and nurture nation builders. They are the world’s first farm village university.

Know more about GK Enchanted Farm at http://gk1world.com/gk-enchanted-farm or visit their Facebook or Instagram pages. For bookings, please email bookings@gkenchantedfarm.com.

About Oracle NetSuite
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 15,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.

For more information, please visit http://www.netsuite.com.

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

About Oracle
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

Trademarks
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Safe Harbor
The preceding is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

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NetSuite's Latest Press Coverage

Cumulative Update #12 for SQL Server 2016 SP1

November 13, 2018 BI News and Info

The 12th cumulative update release for SQL Server 2016 SP1 is now available for download at the Microsoft Downloads site. Please note that registration is no longer required to download Cumulative updates.
To learn more about the release or servicing model, please visit:

CU12 KB Article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4464343
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2016 SP1 Latest Cumulative Update: https://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=54613
Update Center for Microsoft SQL Server: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sqlserver/ff803383.aspx

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CRM Systems Fail Sales Teams. Can AI Help?

November 13, 2018 CRM News and Info

CRM systems are designed to automate processes, improve customer responsiveness and increase visibility. Your teams can’t wait to get their hands on the new toolset when they think about having more accurate, secure data at their fingertips. Post-implementation, fast forward a few months and getting your salespeople to properly use your new, shiny CRM is like pulling teeth. So, what causes the disconnect?

Industry analysts generally estimate CRM project failure rates to be between 30% and 70% and user adoption – particularly seller user adoption – is the primary cause of project failure. There are thousands of articles and an entire industry dedicated to addressing this issue, and the common theme amongst them is this: the persistently high failure rates of CRM implementations demonstrate that the challenge is not easily overcome.

Why CRM Fails Sales

Process automation is foundational to CRM, which is inherently beneficial to marketing and customer service teams. Since CRM makes their jobs easier and improves the quality of their work, customer service and marketing teams are quick to embrace CRM. But for salespeople, whose focus is working with customers and driving revenue, CRM is generally perceived as a major disruption, leading to a lack of user adoption and ultimately, project failure.

Lack of Value

Theoretically, CRM systems are extremely beneficial to salespeople. Process automation provides organized and accessible customer and opportunity data, which significantly increases sales effectiveness — and formal sales process automation is proven to increase revenue. Businesses expect their CRM implementation to improve close and win ratios, in turn leading to higher commissions…another benefit for the sales team. But, unless there is obvious and rapid value for sellers in using the system and it can demonstrably improve their work experience, no amount of training, positive, or negative reinforcement is going to drive anything more than the minimal level of adoption.

Time Consuming (and boring) Data Entry

Typically, entering data in CRM is boring, time consuming, and contrary to the action-oriented nature of salespeople, which is why CRM fails to meet the expectations of businesses far too often.

Salespeople are generally reluctant and, at best, “just-in-time” data entry clerks. When demands for data exceed what sellers feel is necessary at the time, they start skipping steps and may or may not catch up to them later in the sales cycle. Many will “batch” their CRM entries daily or weekly, relying on memory or sketchy notes.

Salespeople Don’t Have All the Data

Business’ email and calendar systems are swimming with useful information about customers, opportunities and prospects. What topics are they discussing? What information are they sharing? What content are they engaging with? The holders of this information, many times, are not users of the system. Therefore, in a traditional CRM system, the salesperson would have to collect this data from other team members, manually organize it, code or assign it, and enter it into the system.

This is not a likely scenario for any individual seller and certainly not a scalable solution for any business.

How to Increase CRM User Adoption Rates

To address this issue, many businesses customize CRM systems with sales activities so that data input is part of the natural flow of the sales process. With enough investment, this strategy can work for your inside sales team. However, when it comes to outside sales or big-ticket sales, this is not a viable option.

Integrating AI and CRM

Enhancing your CRM system with artificial intelligence eliminates time consuming tasks and enables sales teams to spend more time in front of customers working on revenue generating tasks. When integrating AI and CRM, you should look for a solution, such as SalesConnect 365 that provides:

Automated Data Capture: The solution should crawl your systems such as Microsoft Office 365 or Exchange, Dynamics 365 for Sales, SharePoint, Teams, LinkedIn, etc., retrieving all data related to leads, customers, prospects, and opportunities including emails, meeting details, and documents.
Record Enrichment: New contacts should be associated with accounts and opportunities. Leads, contacts, accounts, and opportunities should be automatically enriched with all relevant data and activities.
Analysis: Integrating AI with CRM should provide continuous analysis with vast collections of customer interactions which are organized, assessed, and scored based on dynamic, objective criteria.

If you are interested in learning how AI and CRM can transform your customer relationships, contact our CRM consultants today.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Using Form Save with Custom Web Resources

November 13, 2018 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft has provided plenty of tools for use when out-of-the-box customizations fall short. Using custom web resources on forms can be a powerful tool, but it should integrate seamlessly with the form. To accomplish this, the web resource can hook onto the save of the form. This provides an easy way for users to interact across the different parts of the form without having to worry about multiple toolbars. In today’s blog, we’ll show you how it’s done!

Let’s say we have a web resource that surfaces information from a different entity, or a different source all together, and allows user input. In just a few simple steps, we can save any data we need from the web resource at the same time as the form.

1. Retrieve initial modifiedon information:

var modifiedon = parent.Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“modifiedon”).getValue();

2. Set up callbacks:

parent.Xrm.Page.data.entity.addOnSave(function(context){

//Trigger any necessary calls here

});

parent.Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“modifiedon”).addOnChange(function(context){

modifiedOn = context.getFormContext().getAttribute(“modifiedon”).getValue();

});

3. Set modifiedon based on user interaction in the web resource:

If(WebResource Needs To Save){

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“modifiedon”).setValue(new Date());

}

else{

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“modifiedon”).setValue(modifiedOn);

}

While the user interacts with the web resource, it is setting the modifiedon field to either the saved date or a new date. This will make the form appear dirty whenever the web resource requires a save, or other function call, to happen. Users will no longer know they are interacting with a separate web resource.

We hope this comes in handy for you. For more tips and tricks – be sure to check out our blog!

Happy D365’ing!

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PowerObjects- Bringing Focus to Dynamics CRM

Reducing DSO using Power Pivot

November 13, 2018 Self-Service BI

Navigating the sea of data

One of the many things which amaze me about Power Pivot time after time is its ability to effortlessly convert raw data into crucial information as soon as it happens. For example, receivables not being paid on time, and payment terms extended for a particular transaction by a salesperson are crucial information that would otherwise be buried in a sea of data.

Although standard ERP systems have all the data for accounts receivable by customers, checking customer AR balances through ERP involves a snail-like process. Typically this entails keying in the customer code into a field box and checking the balance and aging for the outstanding amounts one by one. Even though the data is all there in the system, for a company with more than several thousand customers, identifying and properly acting upon overdue accounts receivable on a timely basis tends not to be such a quick exercise when using ERP alone.

Against this backdrop, over the past several years, Power Pivot and Power Query have empowered accountants to do their job better and faster. The real-time identification of issues concerning the company’s accounts receivable collections is one such example.

Credit control with Power Pivot

While details of credit control policy vary from company to company, its primary objective of reducing the risk of AR non-collection is a common feature across many companies in different industries. Given that it is such a crucial area in the remit of accounting departments, I am sure that other tech-savvy accountants (the kind of high-tech bean counters who read P3 blog posts), must also have implemented similar Power Pivot AR monitoring applications in their organizations. For another P3 blog post on this topic, please refer to an earlier post by David Churchward.

Business need for real-time information

If we want to improve the collection from customers, preparing or extracting a customer’s aging report once a month in the traditional way is not good enough. By the time the report reaches its consumers, both the balance and situation will most likely have changed, and because of this, it is often obsolete. As more and more transactions get recorded during business time, and some receivables get cleared as customers pay, balances always change with the passage of time. Businesses need real-time information and not stale information relating to the previous week or even yesterday, to take an appropriate course of action.

A prior way of sharing real-time information

In my particular environment, previously these pieces of real-time information were shared with internal customers (i.e., individual sales reps) over the phone as and when required. This may sound like an episode from the stone age for some high-tech folks. But before the implementation of the Power Pivot AR monitoring system, I used to get asked frequent questions over the phone from sales people such as:

“What is the current AR balance in SAP and how much is the remaining credit limit for customer X?”
“Has the customer paid today to avoid reaching the approaching credit limit?”
“When will the customer pay next and how much will they pay?”
“How much insurance coverage does the customer have?”
“Will the current credit limit level last until the next collection due date or do they (the salesperson) need to apply for an additional credit limit to make more sales to the same customer?”

Many of these questions required an accountant to share real-time information with individual sales reps by checking the current ERP information and insurance database with the insurer and in cases where the collections were not yet recorded in ERP, by checking the online banking system. However, as you can imagine, answering numerous questions from sales reps is an inefficient way of sharing information especially when there are often several dozen salespeople for each accountant in a firm.

From the Stone Age to the Smart Age: The Data Revolution

Being an automation aficionado, revamping the antiquated telephone AR information service soon became my top priority. Specifically, to reduce the number of phone calls requiring the provision of real-time information, I incorporated all the information which could be requested from the ERP accounting module on AR (and more from other data sources) in a daily report. This included information such as the current AR amount, credit limits, remaining credit limits, the credit limit usage percentage, customer payment terms, the weighted average number of days in overdue, past collections from customers, future collection amounts and the next payment due dates, credit insurance coverage, and promissory note amounts all slicerable by the names of individual sales reps.

Thus, in my quest to be liberated from frequent phone calls, I have implemented a daily AR monitoring system which reveals any overdue amounts as soon as they arise, utilizing standard SAP tables. By using Power Pivot, manual drudgery which could take at least a few days of intensive labor using vlookups to patch up awkward, cumbersome and error-prone “Frankentables” was gone forever, and a sleek comprehensive report that could be refreshed automatically was created.

After this, I spent six months doing daily reporting using Power Pivot which contained up-to-date AR information where it took me a maximum of 15 minutes per day – with this task becoming so repetitive that I could literally do it in my sleep. However, with tools like Power Update, (which was originally introduced here,) it is now possible to update this daily report without any manual intervention whatsoever!

Interactive Power BI dashboard on the web

Power BI provides a better platform for sharing data with sales reps who are frequently on the move visiting customers, than sending out Excel files.

In the interactive Power BI dashboard example below, I’ve included a selection of information relating to the AR and credit limits, Overdue balance, Past and future collections.

Tables used

For this example of a daily AR dashboard, I’ve created a fictitious database in the format of the following standard SAP tables:

Three fact tables:

An accounts receivable open balance list (SAP’s FBL5N closing balance with today’s date)
AR and Bank GL transaction list for a selected period (SAP’s FBL3N)
Credit limit list (SAP’s FDK43)

Four dimension tables (the latter two tables are required if using a normalized customer table):

A calendar table
A customer master table
An employee table (to be related to the customer master table’s salesperson key code)
A world cities table with latitude and longitude data (to be related to the customer master table’s customer address location ID)

For this model, I created a relationship between AR[Due Date], ‘AR & Bank Transaction’[Posting date] and Calendar[Date]. I also created a relationship between the customer master table and the fact tables (AR, AR & Bank Transaction, Credit limit) using the customer keys.

AR analysis

We’ll start with the AR analysis. This part will show the accounts receivable balance by customer with their credit limits. Salespeople can see the AR approaching its credit limit and take appropriate action (such as applying for an additional credit limit). I’ve stuck up measures for the current accounts receivable and remaining credit limits in the value field of the stacked bar chart.

AR =
IF ( SUM ( AR[Gross amount] ) = 0, BLANK (), SUM ( AR[Gross amount] ) )

Remaining credit limit =
[Credit limit total] – [AR]

Where the measure [Credit limit total] is just the sum of the amount field in the credit limit fact table.

Overdue analysis

I created a calculated column identifying the overdue AR amount:

AR[Overdue] =
IF ( AR[Today] <= AR[Due Date], 0, AR[Gross amount] )

Then totaled that up in a measure below:

Overdue amounts =
IF ( SUM ( AR[Overdue] ) = 0, BLANK (), SUM ( AR[Overdue] ) )

I then added a measure to identify the number of overdue days.

Overdue number of days =
VAR OverdueNumberofDays =
    ROUND (
        DIVIDE (
            SUMX ( ‘AR’, ‘AR'[Overdue] * [Overdue days] ),
            SUMX ( ‘AR’, ‘AR'[Overdue] )
        ),
        0
    )
& ” days”
RETURN
    IF ( [Overdue amounts] <> BLANK (), OverdueNumberofDays, BLANK () )

Where

Overdue days =
VALUE (
IF ( HASONEVALUE ( ‘AR'[Today] ), VALUES ( ‘AR'[Today] ), BLANK () )
– AVERAGE ( AR[Due Date] )
)

Ideally, this part should show a nil value, but when the business has thousands of customers, showing a few customers here is quite reasonable. The fewer, the better, however. The business can take appropriate action such as contacting customers to ask for overdue payments.

I’ve also added a measure to identify the number of overdue customers.

Overdue customer distinctcount =
VAR OverdueCustomerDistinctCount =
    COUNTAX ( VALUES ( Customer[Customer Name] ), [Overdue amounts] )
RETURN
    SWITCH (
        OverdueCustomerDistinctCount,
        BLANK (), “No overdue”,
        OverdueCustomerDistinctCount & ” overdue”
    )

I then created a measure to put in the URL field of the image viewer custom visual to dynamically select a thumbs-up guy image or a thumbs-down guy image depending on the existence or otherwise of overdue customers. (I’ve omitted showing the full http address in the DAX code below.)

URL measure =
IF (
[Overdue customer distinctcount] <> “No overdue”,
“https://…omitted…/Thumbs-down-guy.png”,
“https://…omitted…/Thumbs-up-guy.png”
)

Past AR collections

In addition, we can assess the ability of the customer to pay by looking at the historical collection amounts. It is more useful to look at the actual historical cash collection amount for credit assessment than the sales amount which includes amounts which have not yet been converted into cash. For the past collection history, I’d get the other side of the bank journal entries using the AR and Bank journal entries transaction table (from FBL3N). Typically, AR and Bank journal entries consist of either sales and AR recording or AR clearing. In order to get the other side of the bank journal entries, I am using a calculated column formula which was kindly provided by Marco Russo in response to my last article.

‘AR & Bank Transaction'[AR clearing] =
LOOKUPVALUE (
‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Account description],
‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Document Number], ‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Document Number],
‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Year], ‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Year],
‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Account description], “Bank”
)

Then total up the AR clearing journal entries in a measure.

Past Collections =
– CALCULATE (
    SUM ( ‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Amount in local currency] ),
    KEEPFILTERS ( ‘AR & Bank Transaction'[Account description] = “AR” ),
    KEEPFILTERS ( ‘AR & Bank Transaction'[AR clearing] = “Bank” )
)

Future AR collections

In order to grasp the next collection amounts, I just use the measure [AR] without overdue amounts, as the latter were not paid by their due dates and thus should be excluded from the standard collection schedule by due dates.

Future collections =
[AR] – [Overdue amounts]

To show the past and future collections in the same time-series chart, I used a stacked column chart and put the two measures [Past Collections] and [Future Collections] in the value field.

Dynamic scenario selections

Then, I used a “harvester measure” (covered in P3 training) to enable different scenarios to be selected via slicers.

Selected measure =
SWITCH ( [Min measure #], 1, [AR], 2, [Overdue amounts], 3, [Past Collections] )

Where

Min measure # =
MIN ( ‘Measure'[#] )

The ‘Measure’ table is a small table of the three scenarios and remains as a disconnected table.

In a report to the salespeople, it is useful to have a search box feature to be able to input customer names (in a real business environment, a customer code is probably better, but I am using the text customer name in this example) and/ or the salesperson’s name. This becomes especially important when there are more than several dozen salespeople and several thousand customers, as we don’t want to be scrolling up and down the visual to look for a particular salesperson, or hover over the mosaic art as in the visual below to look for a particular customer’s name.

In the dashboard below, I used the Smart Filter by OKViz (i.e., sqlbi aka Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari) and managed to cross out the top item in my long-standing wish list. Thanks to the great innovators, gone is the need to search for VBA codes to insert a slicer search box to efficiently select from several thousand slicer items.

For my overdue dashboard, many of the DAX formulas and their logic were quite straightforward. But the business impact of being able to systematically spot AR overdue amounts on a real-time basis has been huge. The timely monitoring of accounts receivable has prevented overdue amounts becoming uncollectable and prevented more goods from being sold to customers who missed payment due dates until the overdue amount is cleared albeit still within their credit limits. All in all, this can have a tremendous benefit to business by ensuring the timely conversion of AR into cash.

Salespeople can now monitor accounts receivable approaching their credit limit well in advance, so that they can take timely proactive measures such as applying for an increase in the credit limit or requesting customers to pay early for additional sales, rather than reacting in a knee-jerk manner in the event of sales being blocked by the system when the credit limit is reached.

Of course, the accuracy of the report depends on the timely and accurate recording and clearance of AR as we receive collections from customers. So sharing the information on a daily basis requires an accountant to maintain the AR transaction table with the most up-to-date information on a real-time basis, allocating collections as soon as they are received (on the same day) from customers, and addressing and clearing any discrepancies promptly.

Dramatic improvement

Thanks to Power Pivot, Identifying overdue balances on a real-time basis and dealing with issues in a timely manner has become a piece of cake for accountants. Now sales reps can get the real-time information they need without having to depend on accountants. As soon as a customer misses the due date, that is immediately flagged in the daily dashboard, enabling the business to take appropriate action in a timely manner. Power Pivot has provided us with real-time actionable business insights. This, in turn, has reduced the DSO and increased the cash balance of the company.

Even if there are more than several thousand customers in the master table, with the help of Power Pivot, the number of overdue customers at any one point in time can be reduced to less than the number of fingers on one hand as shown in the interactive dashboard below. Time after time, Power Pivot has proved to be a brainy and reliable ally for accountants!

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Let us guide your organization through the change required to become a data-oriented culture while squeezing every last drop* of value out of your Microsoft platform investment.

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France leads effort to save internet from itself with ‘Paris Call’ and Facebook embed

November 13, 2018 Big Data

As the geopolitical picture continues to churn with uncertainty, France is making a strong and surprising bid to assume a central leadership role in fixing the hot mess otherwise known as the internet.

Following a weekend-long tribute to the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I that drew global leaders to Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron made two major announcements that underscored his administration’s drive to address the long list of problems that have put a cloud over the internet’s impact on modern life.

The first came at the UNESCO Internet Governance Forum (IGF) on Monday in Paris, where Macron launched the “Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace.”

The goal is to create a framework for regulating the internet and fighting back against cyber attacks, online censorship and hate speech. The more than 370 signatories included 51 governments, though notably absent were the U.S., China and Russia. It’s also backed by tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Intel, Ericsson, Samsung, Accenture, Fujitsu, SAP, Salesforce and Hitachi.

Applauding Macron’s leadership, Microsoft president wrote in a blog post:

“The Paris Call is an important step on the path toward digital peace, creating a stronger foundation for progress ahead. It calls for strong commitments in support of clear principles and strong norms to protect citizens and civilian infrastructure from systemic or indiscriminate cyberattacks. Similarly, it calls for governments, tech companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to work together to protect our democracies and electoral processes from nation-state cyberthreats.”

Meanwhile, Macron also announced that Facebook had agreed to allow French regulators to “embed” in the company for six months to monitor and understand its efforts to fight online hate speech and other suspicious content.

“It’s a first,” Macron told the annual Internet Governance Forum in Paris, according to Reuters. “I’m delighted by this very innovative experimental approach. It’s an experiment, but a very important first step in my view.”

The move is also one of the first major moves since Nick Clegg, the U.K.’s former deputy prime minister, became Facebook’s new vice president for global affairs.

“The best way to ensure that any regulation is smart and works for people is by governments, regulators and businesses working together to learn from each other and explore ideas,” Clegg said in a statement given to reporters.

These initiatives were just a part of a frenzied few days of action related to the internet’s future in Paris. In addition to the IGF, The Paris Peace Forum held its inaugural event over three days. And on Monday, Paris hosted the Govtech Summit, an effort to “reimagine services that place citizens at the centre of public delivery, where public servants have an array of technology-enabled resources and information at their fingertips, and can use new ways of delivering better, more efficient, more citizen-focused services.”

Attendees at the summit included Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.K. Health Secretary Matthew Hancock, and was organized in part by former adviser to U.K. prime minister David Cameron. The gathering prompted Politico to muse: “Brexit is distracting the U.K. from a much-touted effort to digitize government — and France is only too happy to take advantage of the situation.”

These latest efforts come as France continues to press other European Union members to adopt a tax on tech giants to attempt to level the playing field for smaller startups a and traditional businesses.

Put together, the last few days underscore the remarkable rise in France’s international profile. Diplomatically speaking, the country seemed like an afterthought in many ways just a few years ago. But the election of President Macron 1.5 year ago, plus the void left by the America-firstism of President Donald Trump, created a new opening for France to try to regain a spot on the globe’s center stage.

As some look for an alternative to at the authoritarianism of China and Russia, and the populism sweeping much of Europe and the U.S., Macron has been happy to try to fill a void. Whether his calls for cooperation and globalism will have an impact, however, remain to be seen. But at least for now, France has again found itself enjoying a new relevance on the global stage.

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