Recently I completed upgrading a client’s IBM Cognos environment – both TM1 and BI. It was a “jump” from Cognos 8 to version 10.2, and TM1 9.5 to version 10.2.2. In this environment, we had multiple virtual servers (Cognos lives on one, TM1 on one and the third is the gateway/webserver). Once the software was […]
Data + Intelligence
What do your tea-leaves say about your online experience?
A tea-leaf fortune reader uses the symbols and the patterns formed by the residue of tea in a fine light-colored china cup to predict one’s fortune or future. The art of tea-leaf reading is an intuitive and creative form of divination. In today’s world, we have a much more sophisticated approach and no longer have […]
Looping through files in a folder using ODI
On a recent project, I was faced with a requirement to scan the contents of a folder and load all the files into their respective staging tables. There were multiple file types – Customer file, Store file, Products file, Sales file, etc. Every day, we received zero to many files for each type of file. […]
Displaying Custom Messages in SSRS.
SSRS is a powerful tool not because it projects queries in really good looking charts but because it enhances user experience. The reports are so intuitive that users can navigate and export data without much training. However, as business analyst or data analysts or report designers, it is our responsibility to extend these usability features […]
Data Science = Synergistic Teamwork
Data science is a discipline conflating elements from various fields such as mathematics, machine learning, statistics, computer programming, data warehousing, pattern recognition, uncertainty modeling, computer science, high performance computing, visualization and others. According to Cathy O’Neil and Rachel Schutt, two luminaries in the field of Data Science, there are about seven disciplines that even data scientists in training […]
Disruptive Scalability
The personal computer, internet, digital music players (think ipods), smart phones, tablets are just a few of the disruptive technologies that have become common place in our lifetime. What is consistent about these technology disruptions is that they all have changed the way we work, live, and play. Whole industries have grown up around these technologies. […]
Creating Table of Contents for SSRS reports
Table of contents have always helped readers to navigate through thick volume of books. This feature can be extended to our users in SSRS to navigate through several pages of reports. The table of contents in SSRS is called the document map. A document map is a clickable table of contents that takes the user […]
SSRS – Easy Hacks
In the past few weeks, we created variety of reports starting from simple tabular reports to colorful pie charts to user friendly drill down reports. SSRS tool is very friendly and is developed to provide world class reports to the user community. While browsing through several business intelligence forums, I found couple of questions that […]
What is Change Management?
Written by Matt Stehling Project managers are tasked with change management throughout the life cycle of a project’s duration. The balancing act required to implement changes in a project with an established scope, cost and schedule is challenging. When project managers apply change management, the impact changes will likely have on project cost and/or schedule […]
Healthcare Benchmarking Part 2 of 2
In my last blog post, I introduced the fundamentals and importance of healthcare benchmarking. I highlighted the benefits of benchmarking as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various types of benchmarking. The main point I hope you took away was that regardless of the type of benchmarking, the purpose is the same – to […]
Reduce Hospital Re-admissions with Business Intelligence Tools
Steven Gregor, Microsoft Business Intelligence Consultant at Perficient, has been working with a client to help reduce readmission rates, a key component of the Affordable Care Act. Often times healthcare organizations have a difficult time analyzing readmission data because it is located in multiple systems. The use of business intelligence tools allows data to be […]