Limitless BI - Business Intelligence Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Gareth Cosker, Surface Commercial Executive at Microsoft, joins the show to share his background in IT and how he was able to develop a sustainability-focused application using Low-Code No-Code tools. Gareth speaks to the tool Squirrel365 and praises its ease of use and simplicity. Gareth also shares some of the results he was able to yield and speculates on the future of business intelligence applications.

01:03 – Gareth Cosker joins the show to talk about his IT background and how his career path led him to a unique role at Microsoft

05:07 – Sustainability and a recent application Gareth developed using Low-Code No-Code tools

09:01 – Learning how to use Squirrel

13:27 – Gareth speaks to some of the results of his application and what’s next

17:39 – Why Gareth chose Squirrel365

19:45 – Gareth speculates on the future of dashboard applications

22:48 – Microsoft’s growth mindset

“Now I still operate within the public sector, which is where my heart is and where I think technology can drive the biggest impact, whether that’s in hospitals, front line workers, counsels, those sort of establishments.” (03:25) (Gareth)

“I’ve always said about business intelligence that the aim should be for people to get in, get what they need, get out, and get on with their job.” (11:06) (Donald)

“For me I had a very specific use case. I wanted to present to a customer - which we would traditionally fdo via PowerPoint - and I needed a tool that integrated into that. So, I reached out to colleagues at Microsoft to establish if we have this. There were various creative ways that we would be able to import that into there, but it kinda didn’t give me that visual representation that I needed. Squirrel was purely down to ease of use and how simple for me to keep that kind of backend app going. And the plug-in feature in PowerPoint is really, really simple.” (18:39) (Gareth)

“Wouldn’t it be great if you were on a slide and you could just talk to that slide and it would update that data?” (21:16) (Gareth)

Limitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/

Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk

Gareth’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethcosker/?originalSubdomain=uk

Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

Welcome to Limitless B.I., a show that interviews real world, innovative business leaders who strive to see beyond the data to produce tangible results in their organizations using business intelligence. Today Ziv Barzilay, Director, Products & Engineering at Salesforce, joins the show to expound on the remarkable innovations he’s been working on at Salesforce. Ziv focuses specifically on the Squirrel business application he’s been able to integrate into the organization and the astounding results he’s already achieved less than one year after launch. Ziv discusses engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption, design strategies and what he believes the future holds for similar business intelligence solutions at Salesforce.

01:03 – Ziv Barzilay joins the show to talk about his background and the exciting project he’s working on at Salesforce

05:38 – Tips for engaging salespeople and increasing user adoption

09:27 – Ziv speaks to the type of designs they’ve utilized to simplify their offerings

11:37 – Donald and Ziv speak to the value of the tool Squirrel

15:51 – How Ziv’s colleagues at Salesforce view Squirrel

18:42 – Creating new business cases and identifying value drivers

20:18 – Where Ziv sees the future of business applications such as Squirrel

21:37 – Donald and Paul take a moment to praise the remarkable innovations Ziv and his team have been able to achieve at Salesforce

“It wasn’t easy in the beginning. We went through different design approaches and finally we were able to balance between ‘How do we capture, as much as possible, use cases and still provide a more intuitive UI that Account Executives can actually use themselves. And we were actually very successful because we have about 3,000 AEs using the tool right now and we were able to touch over a quarter of a billion dollars of annual contract value.” (04:31) (Ziv)

“Squirrel is very powerful in terms of almost every property in every component can be connected to a formula. So, the user interface is now fully dynamic based on user conditions. So, we were able to do almost everything we wanted to do with the UI. And, another advantage is that, when we worked with our stakeholders and we got a lot of feedback, we were able to quickly implement new ideas and requirements because of the ease of use. Squirrel is very easy to implement or change things and deploy that to production. It was very simple.” (12:38) (Ziv)

“It doesn’t look like B.I. or a dashboard. People look at it as a full-blown application end-to-end.” (16:23) (Ziv)

“Each business case produces hundreds of data points which we can’t get elsewhere from any third-party company. And now we generate our own benchmark, which we can use for product management, product marketing, roadmap, and other areas in the company.” (19:59) (Ziv)

Limitless BI Website – https://limitlessbi.com/

Donald’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldmaccormick/?originalSubdomain=uk

Ziv’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/zbarzil/?originalSubdomain=il

Squirrel365 Website – https://squirrel365.io/

00:37 – Introducing today’s guest, Donald MacCormick, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and highlights from his illustrious career 

07:10 – Donald breaks down the cycle of business intelligence, technology and IT 

12:47 – Donald speaks to why self-service B.I. means different things to different people 

17:13 – Acquisitions in the B.I. industry 

19:50 – Donald speculates on the future of B.I. 

24:29 – Why Excel remains so pervasive and popular 

30:19 – Donald provides his thoughts on enterprise reporting systems and the numerous other ways B.I. can be utilized 

39:31 – Donald gives his opinion on Covid-19 and the future impact it may have on our world 

EPISODE QUOTES

“The sad thing is that we have gone through at least three cycles and we’ve just delivered slightly better capability to the same people over and over and over again.” (10:00)

“That’s what business intelligence is like. It’s a supply chain that gets the right thing to the right people.” (16:16)

“Technology has moved on, but actually in the last thirty years, has B.I. really changed that much? And, will it change in the next five? I don’t know, but I could take a guess.” (19:36)

“I characterize it [Excel’s popularity] as the three ‘F’s: it’s familiar, it’s flexible and it’s free.” (24:52) 

“If an enterprise reporting system is something that end users can quickly and easily access the data they need then it’s good.” (30:51)

“It’s a time of change. And if you can spot how your business fits into that change, then you can thrive.” (41:03) 

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Donald’s LinkedIn

00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Jefferson Lynch, who speaks to his background in business intelligence and some of the projects he’s been working on with predictive A.I.

08:40 – Trends Jefferson has observed in predictive A.I. and where he sees A.I. fitting into the business intelligence equation 

18:38 – Jefferson makes the case for utilizing intelligence automation over artificial intelligence and provides specific examples 

21:45 – Where Jefferson sees B.I. going in the next five years 

24:58 – Jefferson speaks to the impact Covid-19 has had on his company and how they have pivoted in these difficult economic times 

EPISODE QUOTES

“I think what we’re starting to see is there’s a common way to go about tackling that kind of problem. And I think what’s left to happen is these more defined problems likely get encapsulated into the likes of a B.I. tool and to allow someone who isn’t necessarily an expert predictive modeler to adjust and set up that problem in that particular company.” (14:32)  

“A little anecdote if I could, there was someone who is the head of quite a large hedge fund who said to me, ‘What we’re aiming to be is more Iron Man than Terminator.’ What he was getting at is that actually to be really augmented, and enabled, and helped, but still to be wholly human as well, was his aspiration for them as a company.” (16:09)

“Lots of organizations have been taking advice on what their information and B.I. strategy should be. And, I think the general move continues to be towards the act of self-service.” (22:09)

“I think a potential benefit for its longer term, if this [Covid-19] all carries on, is I think maybe we’ve had a limiting belief, in a way, in that thinking we had to meet physically with an organization that we haven’t perhaps gone after businesses in other countries.” (28:41)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Jefferson’s LinkedIn

00:42 – Introducing today’s guest, Kate Wright, who speaks to her background in business intelligence and how Covid-19 has transformed her work with SAP Analytics Cloud 

08:44 – Kate shares SAP’s vision for business intelligence and the future of the intelligence enterprise 

13:09 – Kate explains SAP’s aggressive strategy in business intelligence, specifically developing a cloud-based analytics platform 

16:27 – Trends and changes Kate has observed in business intelligence 

19:11 – Kate provides her thoughts on the role of IT in augmented B.I., the emergence of predictive A.I. and where she sees B.I. going in the next five years 

24:29 – Kate looks back on what SAP could have done differently with their business intelligence strategy and what the future of augmented B.I. holds 

EPISODE QUOTES

“Most of my career has been spent on business intelligence, and the last few years I’ve been focusing on SAP Analytics Cloud.” (02:36)

“The reason that SAP is focused on our message of the intelligence enterprise is because we believe – and I personally believe – that the future of enterprise applications has to be more intelligent than it is today.” (09:18)

“And when they think about analytics and they think about B.I., we want them to also start thinking about simulating, and forecasting, and correlations, and classifications. Because everyone is going to need B.I. The bread and butter is not changing anytime soon, but let’s start allowing people to do more. And that’s a big part of what we’re doing.” (11:59)  

“When I have dialogues with a CFO or a CRO – no matter what line of business you’re in – the need for information and the need to really understand what you can change, how you can change it, and have that transparency is top of their mind. And they are genuinely curious.” (18:05)

“I think our [SAP’s] strategy to double down on cloud, invest heavy in augmented analytics, bring those analytics domains together, continue to evolve the business intelligence platform, those have all been the right decisions. I just wish we had done that with a larger dialogue and a larger connection with some of our business objects customer community.” (25:28)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Kate’s LinkedIn

Podcast Production & Marketing by FullCast

01:12 – Introducing today’s guest, Chris Sinkwitz 

01:35 – Chris’ background in the home building industry 

04:31 – What business intelligence means to Chris 

05:39 – Unique challenges that the home building industry faces 

07:35 – Utilizing B.I. for land acquisition 

09:44 – Chris discusses the fallout from the housing crisis of 2008

12:45 – The role B.I. played in helping the home building industry recover from the housing crisis 

15:23 – How Chris’ organization is utilizing B.I. 

17:09 – Lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis 

18:50 – Chris speaks to how the housing industry is better prepared today as opposed to 2008

20:14 – Chris talks about the successful marketing B.I. dashboard solution he oversaw 

23:50 – Interesting takeaways from this dashboard solution 

25:34 – Other B.I. solutions Chris has collaborated on 

29:12 – How the usage of B.I. has changed in the home building industry over the past five years 

31:53 – Chris discusses starting his own business 

33:42 – New B.I. initiatives that Chris is focusing on currently

EPISODE QUOTES

“Business intelligence is looking at data holistically and comprehensively. And, it allows you to prove correlation versus causation, use your data as strategic competitive advantage, even find answers to questions you didn’t even know you had.” (04:42)

“The firm I was working at we had roughly 2,500 employees at the top of the market. And the housing crisis, when that hit, within several months we went down to 750 employees give or take.” (10:27)

“In putting that marketing dashboard together, they were able to see real time how these leads were coming in.” (21:42)

“I think there’s a lot of examples [of business intelligence] that we can go through and look at how this has helped the industry and certain firms are actually taking advantage of it.” (28:53)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Chris’ LinkedIn

00:59 – Introducing today’s guest, Leslie Warden
01:36 – The moment Leslie knew she wanted to become an Egyptologist
04:03 – Leslie speaks to some of the excavations she’s participated in
08:21 – A non-glamorized look at archeology
10:53 – The primary goal of archeologists
12:26 – How archeologists piece together the past from broken objects
15:32 – Collecting, documenting and analyzing data
18:57 – The incredibly vast amount of data that Leslie and her colleagues collect
20:39 – How business intelligence can help in the collection, classification, and analysis of this data
22:34 – Challenges Leslie has faced incorporating business intelligence into her excavations
30:18 – Modifying the business intelligence dashboard to include classification and input functions
33:32 – Other benefits Leslie has experienced with the dashboard
35:27 – Leslie speaks to the reaction other specialists have had to the dashboard
38:19 – Next steps for Leslie’s use of business intelligence in archaeology

EPISODE QUOTES

“Looking back on it, it was just the whole kit and caboodle, if you will, right? Animal-headed gods! What’s not to like about animal-headed gods?” (03:10)

“We just move so slowly because we’re reconstructing ancient life based on the little bits and pieces that are left for us. And, if I’m just digging for the showy complete objects, I’m actually wasting 98-99 percent of what’s actually remaining.” (10:53)

“And then for the analysis, you’re left with a bit of a challenge because there is clearly far too much data from any excavation to be entirely analyzed and entirely published.” (17:08)

“What I have found to be my personal challenge is learning the language of the tech and the tech team and them learning the language of the archaeology so that we can actually have productive conversations.” (25:46)

“It [the dashboard] took that three-step process and made it into a seamless and beautiful one-step process, which of course limits human error.” (31:15)

“I’m a huge advocate for getting people from the tech world and from the computer world involved in excavations because there’s so much that we have to share with each other.” (41:08)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Leslie’s LinkedIn

01:02 – Introducing today’s guest, Shaun Taylor
01:22 – Shaun’s background with business intelligence and technology
02:37 – Shifting into a second career in education
03:01 – The changes Shaun has seen in the CIO role throughout the years
04:23 – What business intelligence means to Shaun
05:33 – How new business intelligence technologies shape out decision-making
06:47 – How Shaun got involved in business intelligence
07:54 – The multiple challenges Shaun faced as CIO of the Tacoma Public Schools
09:50 – The data challenge
11:10 – The challenges that public school systems face
13:27 – The importance of metrics
15:32 – How long it took to extract business intelligence metrics from the public school system
17:18 – Developing business intelligence dashboards
20:26 – Key factors that drove the actions that led to such a dramatic increase in graduation rates
22:07 – How the outside community impacted the success of Shaun’s business intelligence dashboards
23:15 – How the community, school board, and faculty reacted to this data
25:16 – Shaun speaks to the ripple effect this dashboard has had on other school districts
26:31 – Next steps for the Tacoma School District
29:25 – Next steps for Shaun in his consulting business
31:47 – The challenge to change the education system itself

EPISODE QUOTES

“And when I retired from the navy that’s when I tried to decide how to best leverage what I understood about information and how to help kids.” (02:27)

“What is the definition of success? That became a pretty challenging topic amongst the school board, the leadership of the district and also the community, because everyone had their own perceptions as to what success is.” (12:24)

“By the way, in education, ‘business intelligence’ is not a term they like to use because they think they’re different from business.” (14:50)

“Each two to three years, we added more benchmarks to see what else maybe we can do to influence better results for the kids. By the time we were done, just last year, our graduation rate is up eighty-seven percent from fifty-five percent.” (18:45)

“Education is a human intensive industry.” (21:01)

“Ya gotta have leadership buy-in and ya have to have leadership credibility to be able to pull something off like this.” (25:59)

“We need to hold school districts, administrators, and teachers accountable for what’s happening in schools.” (32:26)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Shaun’s LinkedIn

00:47 – Introducing today’s guest, Don Woods
01:04 – Don speaks to his role at ARI
02:34 – Telematics explained
05:50 – What business intelligence means to Don
07:19 – How business intelligence has evolved at ARI over the years
09:48 – Don speaks to the vendor management dashboard solution that ARI created
14:48 – Meeting customer needs
15:30 – Measuring the results of this business intelligence dashboard solution
16:23 – Challenges ARI has faced while doing business in Germany
18:28 – The role of analytics
19:11 – The Fleet Health Card
23:19 – How Don and ARI built the algorithm necessary to build their predictive model
25:25 – Customer reactions to the new data tools that ARI is developing
26:47 – The prescriptive and human element of business intelligence
31:28 – Other ways to differentiate through vertical markets
33:25 – Future plans for telematics
36:31 – Remarketing
37:42 – What Don believes the ultimate goal for business intelligence will be
41:54 – Don speaks to other technologies such as artificial intelligence

EPISODE QUOTES

“Really what it [business intelligence] means to me is what it kinda says on the tin, right? It really is generating intelligence for the business. So it’s really about using data to drive good business decisions.” (06:05)

“All of a sudden it starts to snowball. Once you start gaining that competency, then you start to see lots and lots of different areas where this happens, where you’re able to use the data to make and find nuggets of information.” (25:04)

“It’s kinda like brushing your teeth. If you didn’t brush your teeth for twenty years but then you brushed today, you’re compliant with brushing your teeth. But the damage has been already done. ” (28:45)

“You’re starting to see that there’s more data crunching and there’s more strategic thinking around data being done across all areas of organizations.” (38:22)

“It’s really a fun space, this automotive and telematics space, to be involved in right now.” (44:26)

LINKS MENTIONED

Limitless BI Website

Don’s LinkedIn

ARI’s Website