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Tag Archives: Doing

The Benefits of Doing Machine Learning and Analytics in the Cloud

December 17, 2019   TIBCO Spotfire
TIBCOMachineLearningintheCloud e1575902962347 696x365 The Benefits of Doing Machine Learning and Analytics in the Cloud

Reading Time: 4 mins 30 sec.

Analytics with data science has been one of the last enterprise systems to move to the cloud, but the situation has changed fundamentally in just the last year or two. 

Suddenly, there is a proliferation of cloud-based databases and open-source machine learning development frameworks like SageMaker and TensorFlow—all of them now being heavily promoted by the major cloud vendors (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and more). 

The cloud is quickly becoming everyone’s preferred way of doing machine learning and analytics. If you know your way around all the available components, it can be easy to build even the most sophisticated machine learning models for everything from image recognition to fraud detection in the cloud.

What to use—when and how 

There’s a ton of rich functionality available in the cloud that you can spin up right now. Over the last few years, there’s been a real shift from heavyweight on-premises installations of data science and predictive analytics to the more lightweight approach that the cloud offers. 

The breadth of capabilities that the cloud providers have created combined with the ease of use of a data science platform like TIBCO’s, organizations can spin up environments very quickly without a great deal of IT overhead. This combination of scalability and flexibility is the central value of the cloud when it comes to doing analytics. In fact, with TIBCO® Data Science, you can create solutions across all of these various cloud environments without needing to learn the nuances of each. 

Here’s a helpful chart of the technologies available for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the cloud: 

 The Benefits of Doing Machine Learning and Analytics in the Cloud

Proof it’s as easy as it sounds 

It really is that easy. The proof is in our customers’ success stories. Below are a couple of case studies that show how easy it can be to build applications based on sophisticated AI and machine learning, using the cloud.

  • Tipping Point Community fights poverty with data:

As a non-profit organization looking to better understand the drivers behind poverty, Tipping Point started a project to explore correlations between parking citations, late fees, and low-income individuals. Using TIBCO Data Science’s collaborative interface for business users and deploying machine learning models in the cloud to discover insights, Tipping Point found a disproportionate impact on low-income drivers. We’re proud to say these data-driven recommendations that Tipping Point made to the San Francisco Office of Financial Justice led to a change in policy to make the system fairer.

  • Leidos unlocks big data potential for healthcare analytics:

Leidos partnered with TIBCO Data Science, an enterprise-class cloud platform that leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS), to allow users to create machine learning workflows. By using the cloud, Leidos opened up collaboration across teams and was able to perform quicker analyses. It was able to analyze healthcare data to determine the cause of disease outbreaks like HIV and Zika, consolidate data around emerging healthcare policies, and explore human factors affecting space exploration for NASA. 

Across these and many other examples, performing analytics and machine learning in the cloud gives organizations the ability to uncover hidden patterns, anticipate outcomes, and react quickly to real-world events. Data science teams can spin up new systems in the cloud in a matter of hours, performing advanced analytics in a low-code, visual data science environment like TIBCO’s to find the answers to their toughest problems, fast.

Connect teams & scale algorithms with cloud-enabled tech

The TIBCO Data Science platform provides an interactive interface for teams to collaborate on projects in the cloud. Teams scattered around the globe, across different departments, in different roles, can connect through the web-based interface to solve difficult data science problems together. Furthermore, the algorithms TIBCO provides through a simple drag and drop interface are not only easy to use, without requiring a lot of code, but they’re also readily scalable and immensely powerful. But if coding is your thing, you can also use the embedded Jupyter Notebooks that are built into the platform.

Watch this webinar for more on available cloud technologies and the many benefits of doing machine learning and analytics in the cloud.

Get started right now. Go to the AWS marketplace and sign up for a preview of the TIBCO Data Science platform, connect to open sources of data, and start building machine learning models today. 

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Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. Creating

April 28, 2019   BI News and Info

The following is the sixth in a series of conversations about marketing innovation with Jeff Janiszewski and Ginger Shimp from SAP North America Marketing. In this blog, they discuss the importance of creativity to the innovation process.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Across the last five blogs, we’ve talked about what marketing innovation is, why it’s important, and more particularly, how we used it to reach out to our audience in a new way.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: We’re fortunate to work for a company, and a VP, that understands the importance of innovation and supports our efforts. Business is changing more rapidly than it ever has and slower than it ever will, and marketers in every industry need to innovate to keep pace.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Nonetheless, many marketers find themselves focusing on immediate problems rather than designing innovations that will build long-term relationships with their customers. While it certainly makes sense to supply customers with specific information late in the sales cycle, it’s important to understand that on first contact, potential customers are typically looking for empathy and advice. In fact, Stratabeat did a survey and found that emotion is the #1 factor in customer loyalty in 18 of the 18 industries examined. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio once said, “We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: And from a marketer’s perspective, that opportunity for empathy is a great way to begin the design thinking process to look for ways to innovate.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: We’re big believers in the design thinking process. Having a rational, iterative, step-by-step approach to innovation is important, particularly when the collaboration of many participants is required. However, at the heart of the innovation process is creativity. Innovation is not about applying known solutions to known problems; that’s engineering. Innovation is about creating a practical, novel approach to new challenges.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: However, that raises some questions. Will design thinking always lead to innovation? Can you really take a systematic approach to creativity? And can creativity be taught?

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Those questions have been hotly debated by experts for years, and if they’ve reached any conclusion at all, it would be, “it depends.” It reminds me of an entomologist that I met at a party. Her specialty was spiders.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: Wait, I thought entomologists studied insects; spiders are arachnids.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: That surprised me too. Apparently, they study insects, spiders, arthropods, worms, snails, and anything else that creeps you out, but don’t get me off topic. This woman knew absolutely everything there is to know about spider webs and how they’re made, and that’s a vast topic. However, she had never made a real spider web.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: The woman? She’s not a spider.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Exactly. Simply studying creativity and innovation won’t make us creative. Even if she were to spend a lifetime trying, she’d never be able to make a genuine web because she’s not a spider. Now that may seem obvious or silly, but the point is that creativity requires more than just desire and knowledge. It requires some degree of innate ability and skill. The good news is that creativity isn’t binary. You can’t really say that someone either is or isn’t creative. Unless you’re in a complete vegetative state, you have some degree of creativity, but it needs to be nurtured.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: And people will excel in different domains. Some will be creative painters, some will be creative writers, and some will be creative musicians. My uncle was a creative bookkeeper, but he ended up in jail.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: …

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: Well, some people are overly creative and only use their talents for self-fulfillment, but true innovation is inherently pragmatic. That’s why the design thinking approach works well in a collaborative setting. It forces those who are wildly creative to be a little more practical and play well with others, and it encourages those with minimal creative ability to step out of their comfort zone.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: There are a lot of obstacles to marketing innovation such as time, budget, a focus on immediate concerns, and an intolerance for risk, but it’s often the inability of collaborators to communicate with each other effectively that poses the biggest obstacle. In my opinion, marketers and associated creatives need to fashion a common language — an argot — to facilitate better communication.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: Yes, if you want to see a creative whither before your eyes, just say vague things like, “Can you punch that up a little?” or “Can you do that differently?” Marketers need to practice their creative criticism, so in the ideation phase they can say something more than, “That’s not really working for me.”

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Marketers need to get away from their desks and explore artistic endeavors. Jeff and I both read books — well … we listen to audiobooks now. We both like to cook and go to the theatre and visit art museums. There are all sorts of options, but it needs to be something artistic. Intellectual pursuits like playing chess or doing Sudoku puzzles are great ways to engage your brain, but you need to get involved in more subjective pursuits, so you can train yourself to have a more critical eye and be able to easily articulate constructive criticism. It takes practice.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: Criticism is a vital part of innovation because you can’t progress until you determine whether an innovation is making things better or worse.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Often people won’t voice their opinions because they lack the courage of their convictions, or they don’t want to be negative. Naturally, no one wants to work with a toxic troll, but legitimate, thoughtful opinions should be welcomed.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: In any case, marketing innovation is almost always a collaborative process, and each participant will bring his own style and ideas to the table.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Participants also bring unique skills. Some will be leaders, some will be wildly imaginative, and some will be pragmatic project managers. Without question, the most important factor in marketing innovation is bringing together the right people with the right skills.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: From there, you need to empathize with your customers, narrowly define your goal, and begin the ideation process.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingGINGER: Finally, it’s important to remember that there is no failure. This is an iterative learning process. Regardless of whether things go as planned or not, you need to evaluate and share those lessons, and then leverage them into the next innovation.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Doing Vs. CreatingJEFF: So that’s it for now. If you get a chance, please check out our audiobooks on the Intelligent Enterprise ― we cover 15 industries ― and let us know what you think. Seriously. Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you all for reading.

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#PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

March 3, 2019   Self-Service BI

Power Query has a lot of built in functions, but it doesn’t have a function that exactly matches the VLOOKUP in Excel – but by using the M language and other M functions we can certainly replicate some of the VLOOKUP functionality and make an even more flexible lookup function.

Now the example data is like this

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

In Excel we would lookup the price for at specific productkey by using this formula

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

– in this case ProductKey 1 with a price of 100.

In order to replicate this in Power Query we can use the function List.PositionOf

So I add a new blank query

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

And then use the function List.PositionOf – with the following arguments

List – Is the column ProductKey from my lookuptable Products – refer to like this Products[ProductKey]

Value – Is the value to look in this case the value 1

Occurrence – Is set to 0 to only return one value

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

This will return the position of the value in the list – sort of like using the MATCH function in Excel

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

Now to return the price – we can use this result to lookup the price like this

= Products[Price]{List.PositionOf(Products[ProductKey], 1, 0)}

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

And we get 100 returned which is the price of productkey 1.

The formula is structured like this

=NameOfTheTable[NameOfTheColumnToReturnTheValueOf]{PositionReturnedByListPositionOf}

But we why not change it into a function in PowerQuery so we use the function on all rows in a table or on any table.

The function can be created like this

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

The code

(lookupValue as any, lookupTable as table, lookupColumnName as text, returnColumnValue as text) =>
let
// lookupTable= Products,
// lookupColumnName = "ProductKey",
// returnColumnValue = "Price",
// lookupValue = 1,
 colLookup = Table.Column(lookupTable, lookupColumnName),
 colToReturn = Table.Column(lookupTable, returnColumnValue),
 lookup = List.PositionOf(colLookup, lookupValue, 0),
 Result = if lookup >=0 then colToReturn{lookup} else "Not found"
in
 Result

The function takes 4 arguments –

lookupValue – The value to find – can be any type

lookupTable – The Table/Query to lookup in

lookupColumnName – The name of the column to lookup the value in

returnColumnValue – The name of the column from the table to return

The colLookup is a variable that uses the function Table.Column to return a list of values in the lookup column.

The colToReturn is a variable that uses the function Table.Column to return a list of values from the values you want to return column.

The lookup variable uses the List.PositionOf to find the position/index of the search value in the lookup column.

Result will use an if statement to test whether a position is found and if so returns the value at the position in the colToReturn list – other wise returns the text “Not Found”.

After this we can use the function in other tables to lookup the for instance the Product price like this – by added a invoke Custom Function Column

 #PowerQuery – Replicate doing an Excel VLOOKUP in M

OBS – I haven’t tried this on a large table so be aware of any performance issues.

Hope you find this useful – and happy Querying

Here is a link to an example file – Link

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Erik Svensen – Blog about Power BI, Power Apps, Power Query

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Your CRM System Isn’t Your Pet…If It’s Not Doing the Job, Let it Go

May 3, 2018   Microsoft Dynamics CRM
CRM Blog Your CRM System Isn’t Your Pet…If It’s Not Doing the Job, Let it Go

Are you finding it difficult to capitalize on new opportunities and deliver an unforgettable customer experience? Are your efforts to grow or expand being frustrated by old technology or outdated processes? Your legacy CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution may be holding you back. Perhaps you’ve been working with your legacy CRM solution for quite a while. It’s become a part of the family, your team has become familiar with its quirks and limitations, and up until now, you’ve been comfortable with it. It has paid for itself and been a definite business asset.

But of late, you’ve begun to realize that there are some things that your CRM system can’t do, and you may be faced with complex and costly workarounds just to keep it up to date.

When your legacy system starts to show its age, your IT team might be reluctant to let it go because they’ve put so much time and effort into it. In fact, they might have developed an attachment with it–like a favorite pet. They’ll spend hours or even days diagnosing and resolving problems, hoping it will limp along to make it last as long as they can–even past its normal life expectancy.

There is nothing wrong with having a “pet” legacy system, but it will come at a cost in both time and resources. The question becomes not if, but when you will replace it.

The new IT approach: systems aren’t pets

Forward-thinking IT organizations look at their systems not as pets, but as cattle. In other words, they understand that technology is an asset that, when it stops performing, needs to be retired. They appreciate the principle of using their systems to the full, but they are OK with replacing them when something comes along that is clearly a better tool for the job.  When your system starts acting up, perhaps because of poor application development or a bad patch of the operating system or just lagging behind in updates,  don’t waste time and resources trying to figure out how to patch it up and keep stumbling along. Take the opportunity to find a better way.

You may wonder if this is a waste of an expensive investment, but your investment becomes more of a financial burden if it doesn’t continue to fulfill its function and meet your changing needs.

Moving from the status quo to a new approach is where the Cloud comes in. In today’s cloud-first world, you can access the infrastructure you need and use it as long as it is doing its job.  Cloud-based infrastructure is purchased from a qualified Cloud partner and run on a subscription basis. This new IT model makes it cheaper and faster to eliminate the old infrastructure and deploy a new one from scratch. Trying to nurse your legacy systems back to health is a waste of time and money when a cloud-based solution can be up and running quickly with little disruption to your daily business processes. If your IT team has been working overtime to keep your legacy system running, you’ll be surprised and pleased by the amount of time and money you can save by moving to the Cloud. Your cloud provider ’s reputation is built on having experts available 24/7 to care for any issues that arise. It is their responsibility to ensure the reliability of the systems so that you can concentrate on your business. With a reliable Cloud provider, your CRM solution is in the best hands.

When you choose Microsoft Azure as your Cloud platform, you’ll have Microsoft on your side. The burden of making sure that the physical infrastructure is healthy will be removed from your shoulders and placed in the hands of the experts. All the concerns about the hardware and its maintenance are theirs, not yours. Security, compliance, and protection are now their responsibility.  The time and energy you used to spend can now be put to better use growing your business. And with a partner like AKA, even the basics of sizing and monitoring your environment can be eliminated from your concerns; AKA’s Cloud Operations Managed Services will run any Cloud solution on your behalf! Now IT can focus on innovation for your business and forget about running, maintaining, and upgrading your legacy CRM solution. You’ll get all of the benefits and none of the hassle.

Moving  to the Cloud

When you move your CRM to the Cloud, your infrastructure problems can be a thing of the past. To ensure the transition is a successful one, rely on a partner who is knowledgeable not only about the Cloud but also about your industry. Each industry has unique issues, and understanding these issues requires hands-on experience. Our industry experts possess deep knowledge and experience gained from working in and with various industries and from years of close collaboration with our clients.

If you are ready to save time and money and free yourself from the frustration of an unhealthy relationship with your legacy CRM, contact the Cloud experts at AKA. We can show you how to step up to the Cloud and get back to the business of your business.

By AKA Enterprise Solutions, www.akaes.com

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Doing the Time Warp Again!

November 1, 2017   Humor


© Tom Tomorrow

Everything is speeding up so fast that in the near future, everything might happen at the same time!



Also published on Medium.

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Omnichannel Vs. Multichannel: What’s The Difference And Who Is Doing It?

September 22, 2017   BI News and Info
278054 278054 h ergb s gl e1505855447232 Omnichannel Vs. Multichannel: What’s The Difference And Who Is Doing It?

The Japanese culture has always shown a special reverence for its elderly. That’s why, in 1963, the government began a tradition of giving a silver dish, called a sakazuki, to each citizen who reached the age of 100 by Keiro no Hi (Respect for the Elders Day), which is celebrated on the third Monday of each September.

That first year, there were 153 recipients, according to The Japan Times. By 2016, the number had swelled to more than 65,000, and the dishes cost the already cash-strapped government more than US$ 2 million, Business Insider reports. Despite the country’s continued devotion to its seniors, the article continues, the government felt obliged to downgrade the finish of the dishes to silver plating to save money.

What tends to get lost in discussions about automation taking over jobs and Millennials taking over the workplace is the impact of increased longevity. In the future, people will need to be in the workforce much longer than they are today. Half of the people born in Japan today, for example, are predicted to live to 107, making their ancestors seem fragile, according to Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, professors at the London Business School and authors of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity.

The End of the Three-Stage Career

Assuming that advances in healthcare continue, future generations in wealthier societies could be looking at careers lasting 65 or more years, rather than at the roughly 40 years for today’s 70-year-olds, write Gratton and Scott. The three-stage model of employment that dominates the global economy today—education, work, and retirement—will be blown out of the water.

It will be replaced by a new model in which people continually learn new skills and shed old ones. Consider that today’s most in-demand occupations and specialties did not exist 10 years ago, according to The Future of Jobs, a report from the World Economic Forum.

And the pace of change is only going to accelerate. Sixty-five percent of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in jobs that don’t yet exist, the report notes.

Our current educational systems are not equipped to cope with this degree of change. For example, roughly half of the subject knowledge acquired during the first year of a four-year technical degree, such as computer science, is outdated by the time students graduate, the report continues.

Skills That Transcend the Job Market

Instead of treating post-secondary education as a jumping-off point for a specific career path, we may see a switch to a shorter school career that focuses more on skills that transcend a constantly shifting job market. Today, some of these skills, such as complex problem solving and critical thinking, are taught mostly in the context of broader disciplines, such as math or the humanities.

Other competencies that will become critically important in the future are currently treated as if they come naturally or over time with maturity or experience. We receive little, if any, formal training, for example, in creativity and innovation, empathy, emotional intelligence, cross-cultural awareness, persuasion, active listening, and acceptance of change. (No wonder the self-help marketplace continues to thrive!)

These skills, which today are heaped together under the dismissive “soft” rubric, are going to harden up to become indispensable. They will become more important, thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning, which will usher in an era of infinite information, rendering the concept of an expert in most of today’s job disciplines a quaint relic. As our ability to know more than those around us decreases, our need to be able to collaborate well (with both humans and machines) will help define our success in the future.

Individuals and organizations alike will have to learn how to become more flexible and ready to give up set-in-stone ideas about how businesses and careers are supposed to operate. Given the rapid advances in knowledge and attendant skills that the future will bring, we must be willing to say, repeatedly, that whatever we’ve learned to that point doesn’t apply anymore.

Careers will become more like life itself: a series of unpredictable, fluid experiences rather than a tightly scripted narrative. We need to think about the way forward and be more willing to accept change at the individual and organizational levels.

Rethink Employee Training

One way that organizations can help employees manage this shift is by rethinking training. Today, overworked and overwhelmed employees devote just 1% of their workweek to learning, according to a study by consultancy Bersin by Deloitte. Meanwhile, top business leaders such as Bill Gates and Nike founder Phil Knight spend about five hours a week reading, thinking, and experimenting, according to an article in Inc. magazine.

If organizations are to avoid high turnover costs in a world where the need for new skills is shifting constantly, they must give employees more time for learning and make training courses more relevant to the future needs of organizations and individuals, not just to their current needs.

The amount of learning required will vary by role. That’s why at SAP we’re creating learning personas for specific roles in the company and determining how many hours will be required for each. We’re also dividing up training hours into distinct topics:

  • Law: 10%. This is training required by law, such as training to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

  • Company: 20%. Company training includes internal policies and systems.

  • Business: 30%. Employees learn skills required for their current roles in their business units.

  • Future: 40%. This is internal, external, and employee-driven training to close critical skill gaps for jobs of the future.

In the future, we will always need to learn, grow, read, seek out knowledge and truth, and better ourselves with new skills. With the support of employers and educators, we will transform our hardwired fear of change into excitement for change.

We must be able to say to ourselves, “I’m excited to learn something new that I never thought I could do or that never seemed possible before.” D!

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Not doing nothing

April 1, 2017   Humor

Posted by Krisgo

 Not doing nothing

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 Not doing nothing


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 icon smile Not doing nothing

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The Cost of Doing Nothing vs Harnessing the Power of Dynamics 365

March 20, 2017   Microsoft Dynamics CRM

crossroads 300x200 The Cost of Doing Nothing vs Harnessing the Power of Dynamics 365

Goals.  We all have them.  Whether officially defined or not, there is something we are striving to achieve.  The problem is that we often just don’t have time to spend on the activities that can lead us to achieve those goals.  In my decade of working with tribal governments and tribal enterprises, I hear story after story where great goals (goals like improved tribal member service delivery, better operational and financial insight, etc.) have been on the table for years without much progress being made.  The reasons are always the same:  we get caught in the whirlwind of everyday tasks and there just there isn’t enough time or budget.  Ask anyone why their business goals were not achieved and you can pretty much guarantee that time and budget, or the lack there of, will be one the main reasons.  This is especially true in the world of technology and the goals we have around automation and process improvements.

Evaluating the cost (both time and money) of any technology project will always be important, but what is often forgotten is evaluating the cost of doing nothing.  How long can you afford to continuing making decisions on month old financial data rather than real-time and forecasted financials?  How much staff and space costs will you continue to waste storing and sifting through decades of paper records?  How will you ever be able to spend focused time addressing key tribal member concerns when you spend two hours a day manually approving paper purchase requests, budget amendments, and employee time cards?

Cloud based technologies like Office 365, Intacct, and Dynamics 365 are making huge strides in reducing the time and cost for technology implementations.  By eliminating the need for capital outlays of server hardware, traditional software licensing, increased staffing, and all the time required to set that up, cloud based technologies become operational subscriptions that can be implemented in much less time.  This allows you to get more done with those time and budget constraints that we can never escape.

Too often the time and budget we don’t have to spend on technology goals can only be freed up by putting in the technology we don’t think we can afford.  The question becomes, can you continue to afford to do nothing?

By Matt Borkowski, Arctic IT Tribal Platforms Manager, [email protected]

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Here’s What Superstar CHROs Are Doing In 2017

March 6, 2017   SAP

277357 l srgb s gl 300x200 Here’s What Superstar CHROs Are Doing In 2017“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs

As a part of the last wave of Millennials joining the workforce, I have been inspired by Jobs’ definition of innovation. For years, Millennials like me have been told that we need to be faster, better, and smarter than our peers. With this thought in mind and the endless possibilities of the Internet, it’s easy to see that the digital economy is here, and it is defining my generation.

Lately we’ve all read articles proclaiming that “the digital economy and the economy are becoming one in the same. The lines are being blurred.” While this may be true, Millennials do not see this distinction. To us, it’s just the economy. Everything we do happens in the abstract digital economy – we shop digitally, get our news digitally, communicate digitally, and we take pictures digitally. In fact, the things that we don’t do digitally are few and far between.

Millennial disruption: How to get our attention in the digital economy

In this fast-moving, highly technical era, innovation and technology are ubiquitous, forcing companies to deliver immediate value to consumers. This principle is ingrained in us – it’s stark reality. One day, a brand is a world leader, promising incredible change. Then just a few weeks later, it disappears. Millennials view leaders of the emerging (digital) economy as scrappy, agile, and comfortable making decisions that disrupt the norm, and that may or may not pan out.

What does it take to earn the attention of Millennials? Here are three things you should consider:

1. Millennials appreciate innovations that reinvent product delivery and service to make life better and simpler.

Uber, Vimeo, ASOS, and Apple are some of the most successful disruptors in the current digital economy. Why? They took an already mature market and used technology to make valuable connections with their Millennial customers. These companies did not invent a new product – they reinvented the way business is done within the economy. They knew what their consumers wanted before they realized it.

Millennials thrive on these companies. In fact, we seek them out and expect them to create rapid, digital changes to our daily lives. We want to use the products they developed. We adapt quickly to the changes powered by their new ideas or technologies. With that being said, it’s not astonishing that Millennials feel the need to connect regularly and digitally.

2. It’s not technology that captures us – it’s the simplicity that technology enables.

Recently, McKinsey & Company revealed that “CEOs expect 15%–50% of their companies’ future earnings to come from disruptive technology.” Considering this statistic, it may come as a surprise to these executives that buzzwords – including cloud, diversity, innovation, the Internet of Things, and future of work – does not resonate with us. Sure, we were raised on these terms, but it’s such a part of our culture that we do not think about it. We expect companies to deeply embed this technology now.

What we really crave is technology-enabled simplicity in every aspect of our lives. If something is too complicated to navigate, most of us stop using the product. And why not? It does not add value if we cannot use it immediately.

Many experts claim that this is unique to Millennials, but it truly isn’t. It might just be more obvious and prevalent with us. Some might translate our never-ending desire for simplicity into laziness. Yet striving to make daily activities simpler with the use of technology has been seen throughout history. Millennials just happen to be the first generation to be completely reliant on technology, simplicity, and digitally powered “personal” connections.

3. Millennials keep an eye on where and how the next technology revolution will begin.

Within the next few years Millennials will be the largest generation in the workforce. As a result, the onslaught of coverage on the evolution of technology will most likely be phased out. While the history of technology is significant for our predecessors, this not an overly important story for Millennials because we have not seen the technology evolution ourselves. For us, the digital revolution is a fact of life.

Companies like SAP, Amazon, and Apple did not invent the wheel. Rather, they were able to create a new digital future. For a company to be successful, senior leaders must demonstrate a talent for R&D genius as well as fortune-telling. They need to develop easy-to-use, brilliantly designed products, market them effectively to the masses, and maintain their product elite. It’s not easy, but the companies that upend an entire industry are successfully balancing these tasks.

Disruption can happen anywhere and at any time. Get ready!

Across every industry, big players are threatened — not only by well-known competitors, but by small teams sitting in a garage drafting new ideas that could turn the market upside down. In reality, anyone, anywhere, at any time can cause disruption and bring an idea to life.

Take my employer SAP, for example. With the creation of SAP S/4HANA, we are disrupting the tech market as we help our customers engage in digital transformation. By removing data warehousing and enabling real-time operations, companies are reimagining their future. Organizations such as La Trobe University, the NFL, and Adidas have made it easy to understand and conceptualize the effects using data in real time. But only time will tell whether Millennials will ever realize how much disruption was needed to get where we are today.

Find out how SAP Services & Support you can minimize the impact of disruption and maximize the success of your business. Read SAP S/4HANA customer success stories, visit the SAP Services HUB, or visit the customer testimonial page on SAP.com.

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Doing GeoLocation in PDI – Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)

January 17, 2017   Pentaho

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Geo Location

Geo location is something we often need in ETL work. And while we had a step that worked in PDI 5.x and earlier releases, we just noticed it’s not currently working.

Until this morning, that is :p

I just forked Matt’s initial project and applied the relevant changes to make it compatible with Pentaho 6+

The basics

Well, easy to understand… We have an IP address, we want to know where it comes from!
trans Doing GeoLocation in PDI   Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Geolocation transformation – Let me see if it finds out where I am…
Once I execute this, I get the following result:
det Doing GeoLocation in PDI   Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Yep, this is where I am…
I am indeed in Porto Salvo, Portugal, so this is right. Can’t get any easier than this!

Making it work

So, how to make this work? First, you have to get the plugin from the PDI marketplace
This plugin is available through the marketplace. Just go ahead and install it.
marketplace Doing GeoLocation in PDI   Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
PDI Marketplace – Get your goodies from here
After installing it and restarting PDI, you’ll see the GeoIP Lookup step in the lookup folder. Configuring it is straightforward: You point to the stream field containing the IP address, point to the IP database files and specify what fields you want back:
stepConfig Doing GeoLocation in PDI   Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Configuring the step

Getting the IP Database files

You need to get the files from MaxMind, and from my experience these guys do a great job here. They have some great commercial offerings but also a GeoLite database for country and city location. You can get them from here
GeoLite Doing GeoLocation in PDI   Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle)
Getting the GeoIP data files
And you should be done! This even works great in a map reduce job

Pedro Alves on Business Intelligence

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