I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat

On May 10th, 1940, Winston Churchill gave a speech before the British Parliament. It was his first after having taken upon himself the task of forming the government to replace that of Neville Chamberlain. This speech later became known as the “Blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech. (It is interesting to note that we often refer …

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Adding Holidays to the Time Dimension

Honoring Passover – A BI tip for the holidays! Someone at your organization will probably want to perform BI data slicing based on the holidays. Examples may include: “all sales made during the holiday period”, or “the number of work hours by employees in department X without weekends and holidays”. So how can we filter …

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BI Project Management in the Age of “In Memory”

BI projects tend to take a long time. This is a known problem. Many clients know that when they embark on a BI project with the IT department, they will probably have to wait a long time for the result, go through requirement surveys, make a decision on the design, etc. It won’t just come …

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The Tantalus Paradox

The Tantalus Paradox refers to a situation in which on the one hand, a manager is surrounded by information systems flooding him with a lot of data about his organization, and on the other hand he does not receive the information he needs when he needs it in order to make decisions. On more than …

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The Cat in the Hat and the BI Project

A few nights ago I was reading my kids one of their favorite books, “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”, by Dr. Seuss. As I was reading the delightful sequence of “disasters” for the umpteenth time to the sound of my children’s laughter, another part of me was dealing with the surprising revelation that …

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