Building a Route to CRM Analytics

On the roadmap to customer relationship success is the intersection of customers and insights. This large category of technology discipline involves business intelligence, predictive analytics, and, of course, customer relationship management solutions. Businesses know their customer data is a strategic asset. How they turn that data into insight through CRM analytics ─ to address typical [...]

Microsoft BI Recognized as a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant

Whenever I meet customers and I have the opportunity to talk about business intelligence, I am always struck by the universal truth that most enterprises run on Microsoft Excel.  This is a great opening to talk about how much is known about the amazing capabilities embedded in the Microsoft BI platform across SQL Server, SharePoint [...]

BI Shakes Up Companies to Develop New Insights

As I reflect on my lengthy career at several cutting-edge, high-technology companies helping to advance business intelligence (BI) within the enterprise, it confirms my belief that BI and advanced analytics will change the world. We are experiencing changes of a magnitude never seen before. These changes will mandate a redesign in the way people work [...]

Avanade at AXUG Summit 2012

Excitement is building as we prepare for the AXUG Summit 2012, the premier Microsoft Dynamics AX user group scheduled next week in Seattle at the Washington State Convention Center. The event will be huge this year with more than 800 attendees and over 200 breakout sessions covering a wide range of topics.   We’ll have [...]

Executing on Big Data Insights: It’s Everyone’s Business

Earlier this month, I contributed an article on Forbes that discussed whether big data will live up to all the hype. In the article, I shared a few tips on how companies can overcome obstacles in dealing with big data. Perhaps most importantly, companies need to empower their employees to act on the insights they unlock.   [...]

The Challenge and Reality of Big Data

Some things in life are inevitable: death, taxes and the ability of the tech sector to create acronyms and overly-hyped buzzwords. Today, I’m going to address the latest of those buzzwords, Big Data, and by the end I promise to try to come up with an acronym of my own just for fun.   Big [...]

Is Big Data Producing Big Returns?

Avanade’s latest global research findings were announced today highlighting executive attitudes and adoption trends surrounding big data. The big data survey shows that the investments companies are making to manage big data are paying off. In fact, 73 percent of companies have already used data to increase revenue by growing existing revenue streams or creating entirely new [...]