EPM Enables More Effective Use of BI Tools

January 12, 2009

Lori Wizdo, the Vice President of Marketing for KNOA Software, says that managers know little about the problems and challenges end users have in their use of sophisticated BI programs. KNOA’s experience and performance management software—which, she says, sits between BI and business process management—is designed to shine a light on the issues.

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Tableau Software’s Chabot: Not Your Father’s Business Intelligence

January 5, 2009

Big projects often disappoint because they are built on centralized platforms that are difficult to deploy, use complex interfaces and are run by specialists, says Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot. While these platforms remain useful in the long run, they must be supplemented by a separate class of easy-to-use and quickly deployed “rapid fire” products.

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MTG’s Ron Moore on Why Finance Departments Should Drive BI

December 22, 2008

MTG Founder Ron Moore says that Finance and IT both want the same thing — for the company to succeed — but that the tasks for which they are responsible can conflict with each other. The key is for Finance to take control of BI projects. Both sides of the equation, however, must be sensitive to the needs of the other.

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News Podcast: Open Source BI Vendor Pentaho Works with UK’s NHS

December 17, 2008

Lance Walter, the Vice President of Marketing at open source BI vendor Pentaho, says that a deployment with the National Health Service in the U.K. is the first publicized use of its data mining platform for health care. The NHS is leveraging the platform
to extend an existing application that mines data from previous patients to enable intervention with at-risk populations.

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Where BI and EPM Software Meet

December 4, 2008

David Abdo, the CEO of Bitam, says that everyone has their own definitions of business intelligence software and enterprise performance management software. Thus, it is important for the CIO, CEO and CFO to have a clear understanding of what the software packages do, how they work together and how to use them.

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SaaS is Faster and More Responsive than Traditional App Creation

December 3, 2008

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enables companies to establish services and applications far more quickly than in the past, says Stephane Dubois, the Chairman, CEO and Founder of Xignite. Until a couple of years ago, SaaS was driven by the IT departments. Now, Dubois says, the business side is more aware of the potential of these emerging platforms and is pushing for their use.

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SaaS and Desktop Productivity Tools

September 15, 2008

Software -as-a-service desktop applications provide employees with a consistent set of tools and applications wherever they are. This flexibility greatly enhances productivity and cut costs, says InfoStreet CEO Siamak Farah. The biggest challenge, he says, is employee buy-in.

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Virtual PBXes Offer Great Advantages — If Used Correctly

September 2, 2008

Virtual PBXes are software-as-a-service tools in which on-site hardware and software are replaced with downloads from the Internet cloud. Steve Adams, Protus’ Vice President of Marketing, says that Finance and IT executives must be clear on the overall costs and the organization’s needs.

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Podcast: Where Does Telepresence Fit In?

August 25, 2008

The growth of powerful end point technology and bandwidth- rich networks makes telepresence–a step beyond tele-conferencing–a feasible tool for a wider variety of corporate workers. Jim Kaufold, the Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Teliris, tells The IT-Finance Connection that a cohesive deployment strategy agreed upon by IT and end-users is necessary to make sure that these projects succeed.

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Security and Compliance: IT and Finance Must Work Together

August 5, 2008

The CFO and the CIO and their departments must reach a new level of understanding as regulatory and security issues coalesce. Avishai Wool, the CEO and Co-Founder of AlgoSec, says that the interplay of the two departments is particularly important in PCI-related issues because the data that is being stored and provided to regulators belongs to the CFO’s office.