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Navigating the Amazon Q Ecosystem: Amazon Q Business vs. Amazon Q in QuickSight

The introduction of Amazon Q features a powerful generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed to analyze business trends, assist in software development, and maximize the potential of a company’s internal data. Amazon Q connects…

Uncategorized

How “Work” is Hindering Your Finance Team

I was recently discussing with a colleague what differentiates our various clients. While each of them is undergoing improvement in some form, it is clear that some Offices of Finance perform significantly better than others. The basic difference…

Business Analytics

Is “Self-Service” Analytics the New “Big” Data?

Last spring, I had the opportunity to attend a local analytics conference with Dr. Claudia Imhoff as the keynote speaker. As she got on stage to begin her presentation, she started out by making a statement along the lines of “For every…

Business Analytics, Technology Spotlight

New Features of Cognos Analytics v11.1: Data Module Enhancements

In previous releases of Cognos Analytics, we have seen a trend of integrating many of the features of metadata modeling in Framework Manager into the Cognos Analytics interface. This trend is continuing with new or improved modeling capabilities…

Business Analytics, Data Management

Challenges of Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is defined as “the process of dividing customers into groups based on common characteristics so companies can market to each group effectively and appropriately.” By using the correct attributes to define the customer…

Data Management, Technology Spotlight

Snowflake: A Modern Cloud-Based SQL Data Warehouse

With the maturing and ever increasing acceptance of the cloud across multiple industries and the data gravity gradually moving to the cloud, i.e. more data being generated in the cloud, we are seeing some interesting cloud-based data and analytics…

Business Analytics, Technology Spotlight

Metadata Comparison – Microsoft vs. Cognos

Metadata has long been an essential part of every successful organization’s analytics strategy. In this article, I sat down with two of Ironside’s foremost experts on the topic to discuss its origin and value and how two of the industry’s…

Business Analytics, Data Management

What to Consider When Building Your Data Democratization Strategy

Data democratization is the ability of an organization to provide information to end users in an easy and effective way. The goal is to provide self-service of information to end users with minimal IT support. There are many things that can…

Data Science

Five Traits of Highly Effective Data Science Teams

2019 is the year that data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence for business will become ubiquitous. Most organizations large and small, across all industries, have recognized the benefits and competitive advantage that these…

Uncategorized

Introducing 5 Key Principles for a Modern Office of Finance

From time to time every professional should take a step back and assess where they have been, where they are today and where they want to go. The Office of Finance is no exception. As we begin to plan for next year, we spent some time reflecting…

Business Analytics, Data Management, Data Science, Featured

Having Trouble With Your Data Strategy? Then Map It.

When asked “What’s your data strategy?” do you reply “We’re getting Hadoop…” or “We just hired a data scientist…” or “If we only had a data lake, all our problems would be solved…”? Plotting a good data strategy requires…

Ironside is a data, analytics, and AI consulting and technology implementation company. We work with clients to understand their business objectives and day-to-day challenges, then employ our deep expertise in data strategy, architecture and engineering, integration, business intelligence, AI, and generative AI. We create technical solutions and practical approaches designed to drive smarter, data-driven decisions across a company and help it move further and faster toward its business goals.