Last month, we gave you a few summer reading suggestions from our experts, and they were so well-received we decided to bring you three more book recommendations from some more Ironside luminaries. These book recommendations will take you into the final stretch of the season feeling enriched with new insights into organizational growth, analytics strategy, and motivational methods. We hope you enjoy this list as much as you enjoyed the last one. Happy reading! Read more
By now, we’ve all heard the V3 definition for Big Data maybe a million times: Volume (Size of Data), Variety (Type of Data) and Velocity (Frequency of Data) with Veracity (Accuracy of Derived Insights) thrown in as an extra sometimes. The issue is that this all-too-common definition has caused some confusion in organizations around who qualifies as having big data or a big data problem. Read more
When reports are run in IBM Cognos BI, a query is made to a data source and any relevant results get returned. But what if in the moments after executing the report, the data changes and is updated? Is there a way to auto refresh a report instead of users having to manually re-run it? Fortunately, the answer is yes. Here’s how. Read more
As we mentioned in a recent article, The Why, What, Who, and How of Successful Hadoop Deployment, there’s a lot you need to consider when implementing Hadoop to manage big data at your organization. Now we’ll build off that perspective and explore the data lake. Like any other new methodology just starting to gain ground in the information management space, there are a lot of assumptions about what data lakes can do and how they tie in with Hadoop-based infrastructures. In this article, we’ll discuss the most essential pieces of knowledge you need to wade into data lakes, dispel some of the rumors around them, and explain how they can fit into your information management ecosystem.
Like many products, Cognos Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) goes through regular updates. The most recent release was Cognos ICM 9.0 on May 5th, a follow-up to the version 8.1.3 release on February 13th. Both of these releases included some big changes. The majority of these changes affect model development – creating and modifying your system. Speaking as an implementer of ICM systems, I feel that the features rolled out this year will help me do my job easier and faster. Below are several examples to show you why. Read more
On June 3rd, Ironside hosted a webinar on Donor Optimization Techniques with IBM Business Analytics. Industry experts from IBM, along with special guest Monique Dozier, the Assistant Vice President of Advancement Information Systems & Donor Strategy at Michigan State University, demonstrated techniques for successfully increasing and accurately targeting fundraising efforts. Read more
On June 23rd Ironside hosted a High Impact Incentive Compensation Reporting and Dashboarding webinar, where we reimagined what can be done with incentive compensation reports using our expertise in and success with transforming business through an enhanced user experience. If you are a consumer or creator of reports for any level of the sales organization and beyond, then this webinar is for you. Read more
As you can see from the title, there are a lot of “as-a-Services” floating around in the modern marketplace. New vendors appear every day offering software, platforms, and infrastructure over the cloud. In the midst of this wild west-style atmosphere, how can you be sure that the type of solution you choose will be right for you and will consistently perform in the way you expect? Read more
IBM recently rolled out Watson Analytics Pro, a more feature-rich, subscription-based version of their free Watson Analytics platform. This new option adds some powerful new functionality to the already excellent base product, enabling subscribers to be more connected to their existing data sources and analyses, providing more storage space, and allowing for easy administration of Professional licenses and users. The best part? IBM has announced to existing Cognos BI, TM1 and Sales Performance Management customers a program that allows free subscriptions to Watson Analytics Professional Edition. This is a limited time offer. Read more
Guarding the security of and defining access to data is often a necessary business requirement. Not all users can or should have access to a total data set, so filter strategies need to be applied to restrict what appears to different users running reports. As Cognos developers, the first question we should ask when faced with this requirement is what filter strategies work best for our data and why? Read more
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.