First Operational Business Intelligence Awards
How many years of your life have you spent bent over a spreadsheet trying to tease out Truth, Justice and the American Way? I started working on spreadsheets when they were called VisiCalc and then Lotus 1-2-3, and yes I realize how much that last sentence ages me.
We made better business decisions even in those early days. We had to key data in from printed reports back in the day. We became human filters passing digital data through our fingers so it could become OUR digital data in Lotus or later Excel.
We’ve come a long way. One of Atlantic’s coolest customers, Entrinsik located right down the street, created a feed and database agnostic tool called Informer that does things I dreamed about. The years I would have gotten back if our data warehouse and SQL reporting tools at M&M/Mars could magically tie data from internal AND external systems.
I love the IDEA of Informer. Selling it to our tech guys at M&M would have been an interesting conversation. In the end, M&M’s ISG tech team wanted sales and marketing to be self-sustaining. Sales and marketing were too much of a pain to do anything else. We didn’t have a tool like Informer, a tool capable of blending, matching and empowering. If you’ve read any of my Marketing Director at Atlantic posts, my ScentTrail Marketing posts, @ScentTrail Tweets or my Internet marketing writing for Technorati you know data democracy and the empowerment it creates is a favorite topic.
We live in special times as marketing pros. We don’t have to GUESS so much, but we need information to do what we need it to do. When we need a standing front somersault we need real time business intelligence, easy to cut, spin and create actionable information mined out of an impossible black hole of data that gets more impossible every minute of every day. We need to find golden needles so well hidden no pivot table or what if analysis will ever even know they are there.
I wrote about No Silver Bullets or Barking Dogs in web development on Friday. There are times when the right information is worth millions, years of your life, advancement in your career or all of the above. There are times when a silver bullet is a very good idea. Don’t know about you, but I’ve found it TOUGH to be so armed in my 30 year career.
My friends at Entrinsik want to pat me and every other BI spreadsheet junkie on the back. Entrinsik’s First Annual Operational Business Intelligence Awards reward the hardest working people in rock and roll – analysts and line managers who battle numbers, feeds and giant Ogres to help marketing, sales, manufacturing, nonprofits, colleges, universities and that garage business you love and want to fund your retirement.
The First Annual Entrinsik BI Awards focus on creative uses of their magical Informer reporting tool. Our marketing team and I are working on a creative use of Informer’s ability to tie Google Analytics, Argyle Social and site conversion data from our ancient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system together. Probably NOT going to make the BI Awards 2.29 deadline, but we will make next year’s Entrinsik’s BI Awards. If you are doing cool things with Informer be sure to APPLY for an Informer award today (deadline is 2.29).
Just curious? Learn More About Entrinsik’s Operational BI Awards
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Entrinsik’s Informer reminds me of Arthur C. Clark’s famous quote “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Feel like you are drowning in BI?
Entrinsik’s talented team can help (they are helping me).
Call 888.703.0016 and tell Yanni or Sharon Martin sent you. Email sales(at)Entrinsik(dot)com.
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Got a great Battling Spreadsheet Ogres story?
Share it on Entrinsik’s Contact Form and they will pat you on the back. Keep the faith, data is growing like wild Kudzu but so are cool new curation tools such as Informer (read my Curation Is The Next Web Revolution post for more hope).
Martin
