Month: July 2013

ViewPoints Business Intelligence Event was a Success!

We want to thank all of our clients and partners that made ViewPoints business intelligence event a success in 2013. With so much changing in the business intelligence world, the day was spent discussing, presenting and learning new concepts in BI.  A few highlights from the ViewPoints event:[quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]”You put on a great venue. I like your presentation style, Doug! You find a way to make BI and data fun and relevant to non-geeks.”  Jean Sperlak – Olap Office [/quote]

Doug Hoogervorst, with all his humor, kicked off the ViewPoints event with a very popular topic – Master Data Management.  A challenge all organizations face because data resides in multiple systems.  How do we keep “item” from one system equal to “product” from another and “part code” from a third? MDM is the hot topic in business intelligence because it is not easy. For a limited time, you can access his presentation materials here! 
  

Many of our clients participated in presentations throughout the day.  Ava Jones, Enterprise BI Manager for AdvancePierre Foods presented with Doug in “PC: Not Politically Correct – but Product Contribution”. She discussed how APF’s Business Intelligence solution takes their data from 10 different data sources and applies that information to the actual product cost. Providing this information to Sales and the Management Team was crucial. Not to mention, the solution saved APF $50,000+ in the first six months in man hours alone.

Neal Cram, Don Sebastiani & Sons, was kind enough to present with the TARGIT Team during “Making Beautiful Dashboards: How to create the best dashboards for you organization.” A very popular session from the surveyed attendees commenting that, “creating dashboards, gauges, and “out of the box” data displays were a highlight to the event.”

Our Partners, TARGIT and OLAP Office held widely attended breakout sessions in the afternoon. TARGIT demonstrated their new release TARGIT 2013, which is expected to be available the beginning of July 2013. Howard Taylor, from OLAP Office, gave a informative presentation on budgeting for multiple reasons (financial, sales, depletions, production, reforecast) all in one tool! [quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]”Well done! I thoroughly enjoyed Dan’s 201 training session.” Colleen Gettle – Don Sebastiani & Sons[/quote]

Francis Smith, Senior Consultant, and Dan Cowan, VP of Consulting, led engaging TARGIT Training 101 and 201 courses the day before the event. The participants were thrilled that we added the courses to the event, learning more advanced views and calculations with the TARGIT tool.

Just before we finished the event, the Business Impact Consultants were available for Advisory Time, where we answered client specific one-on-one questions, recapped any of the sessions, and helped anyone with further training.

Winding up the event, we had a wine tasting and networking hour for all attendees. The wine was phenomenal, as our clients shared a few bottles from their wineries with the group.  The tasting was a great way to recap the day, network, and learn from each other on how to benefit further from BI.

We are looking forward to our next ViewPoints event. Thank you again customers, partners and Business Impact’s employees for making the event a great success!