Baking and Computers, a Surprising History of Analytics Pioneers
Perhaps surprisingly, bakers have a history of being analytics pioneers, from the first business application ever to the latest in-memory technology. In 1951, the J. Lyons company, famous for their tea-shops throughout the UK, built and used the LEO “Lyons Electronic Organizer” computer they had built to run the very first business application ever: bakery valuations. LEO was a massive, valve-powered computer that occupied 5000 sq.ft. of space.... [Read More...]
Making Enterprise Social Work, With SAP Jam
To take enterprise social software to the next level, SAP is proposing a new approach that integrates social and collaboration technology tightly into business applications. Enterprise Social Software: Growing, But Facing Adoption Problems Enterprise social software has been around for around six years, and recent research shows that it continues to be a fast-growing market. According to a recent Forrester Research study, 52% of organizations will... [Read More...]
Never Underestimate The Importance of BI User Training
When I present on the topic of business intelligence failure, one theme that often comes up is inadequate user training. What’s fascinating to me is that everybody usually agrees, slightly wistfully, that there hasn’t been enough training done, often citing time pressures or budget constraints. But most seem to shrug their shoulders and say “that’s just how it is” – or, more fairly, have concluded there are more important problems to... [Read More...]
Flawed Decision Process and the Deadly Sproutbreak
Why did it take so long to discover the source of the deadly outbreak of E.coli poisoning in Germany? Since the start of the outbreak, 35 people have died, over 100 will need kidney transplants or life-long dialysis, more than 3,000 people are ill, and falsely-accused Spanish cucumber producers have lost millions of Euros. Researchers initially relied on the most obvious source of data: the tests carried out on suspect food. Unfortunately, the thousands... [Read More...]
New Evernote Trunk Features SAP StreamWork Decision Collaboration
Evernote is a great Web 2.0 application that is focused on “helping the world remember everything”. It lets you grab information on the fly, such as notes, web pages links, photos, etc. from a variety of different devices (PC, Blackberry, etc.) and let you store them in your Evernote account. Everything you upload is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable (for example, if you take a picture of some text, Evernote automatically... [Read More...]
Introducing SAP StreamWork: New Decision Collaboration
It’s now official: SAP has released its brand-new Web 2.0 product called StreamWork. The project was initially called “Constellation” within SAP, and was first exposed to beta customers on the web site 12sprints.com, as covered in earlier postings on this site. Why the name? It’s a variant on “workstream”, which according to Wikipedia is: “A flow of output, the activities and transactions, that a worker produces as they go about their... [Read More...]
Some Examples of How to Use 12sprints, The New SAP Collaborative Decision-Making Application
SAP’s decision-focused collaboration project, 12sprints, is now in “open beta”, so that anybody can sign up. Here’s the blurb from the web site explaining what it is: Bring order to chaos and transform teamwork into results quickly. Collaborative decision-making brings together: People – Get everyone on the same page Information – Share documents and data all in plain view Methods – Provide structure with business... [Read More...]
Some Examples of How to Use Streamwork, The New SAP Collaborative Decision-Making Application
[post updated to reflect new name, StreamWork]. SAP’s decision-focused collaboration project, 12sprints, is now in “open beta”, so that anybody can sign up. Here’s the blurb from the web site explaining what it is: Bring order to chaos and transform teamwork into results quickly. Collaborative decision-making brings together: People – Get everyone on the same page Information – Share documents and data all in plain view Methods... [Read More...]
SAP’s 12sprints Collaborative Decision-Making Prototype
You can now sign up to be a beta participant of SAP’s 12sprints project, “a collaborative environment for people to make better decisions based on data” or a “people-connecting, data-sharing, decision-making tool that actually sets work in motion.” Early versions of the prototype were glimpsed during demonstrations by Léo Apotheker and Ian Kimbell at SAP SAPPHIRE in Berlin last year, and by Marge Breya at SAP TechEd in Vienna, and the... [Read More...]
Test Your Decision-Making Skills!
I sometimes sit in a café called “La Terrace” near my home in Paris. It’s next to the Metro stop Ecole Militaire, which is one of the closest stops to the Eiffel Tower. So each time I have my coffee and croissant, some of the 7 million or so visitors to the tower each year come out of the metro and consult this map of the 7th Arrondissement to try to help them figure out which way to go. Here’s a close up – the Eiffel Tower is at the top... [Read More...]
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