See Wendy's QSR Metrics Dashboard

Next week at the Information Builders Summit 2012 users' conference in Orlando, Matt Chapin from The Wendy's Company will present the enterprise BI dashboard that Partner Intelligence helped to create. 

I don't want to steal Matt's thunder, but the Wendy's dashboard provides visual QSR metrics for everything you could think of for a restaurant, such as revenue, speed of service, food and labor costs, and cash register controls. From a high-level visual look at all of North America, a user can quickly drill down to a particular daypart for a store in Omaha, NE.  

Matt will explain how they used WebFOCUS to serve up fast enterprise data to thousands of users. You can see Matt's presentation at 8:30AM on Wednesday morning, the 6th of June. 

If you are unable to attend, you can download the Wendy's presentation from Information Builders' website. 

The Next Summit Winner Could Be You!

In 2010, Jaclyn from Indiana attended Information Builders' annual Summit user conference and went home with a new pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones.

Jaclyn is shown here accepting the prize from Eric Bulmahn. To read more, just click here.

In 2011, Kyle from Tennessee won a Kindle eReader. In this picture, Kyle is accepting the prize from Rick Koch. For more information, click here.

This year, wouldn't you like to see your name here?

To be eligible to win, just visit the Partner Intelligence booth at Summit 2012 and register. This year, Partner Intelligence's main prize is a Kindle Fire eReader. In addition, we are giving away $175 worth of Amazon gift cards at our presentation on Agile BI.

By reading this blog, you have taken the first step toward winning. You can discover a secret way to get an unfair advantage over others! To find out more, read this.

Note to Information Builders employees: last year, we had a special give-away for the IBIers staffing the event. The lucky winner was Lori Pieper of the Cincinnati branch sales office. That was our first year doing an IBI give-away, so very few of you entered to win. That meant it was easy for Lori to walk away with a free Kindle eReader. This year, you should give her some competition!

BI Experts Galore at IBI Summit 2012

Mark your calendar! Monday, June 4th, is THE day to hear the industry's top BI analysts talk about business intelligence software market trends and best practices.

If you attend Information Builders' Summit 2012 in Orlando, you can hear Boris Evelson of Forrester Research, Cindi Howson of BI Scorecard, Rita Sallam of Gartner, and Mark Smith of Ventana Research.

Gerry Cohen, co-founder and president of IBI, will kick off the day with the 8AM General Session. All of the industry analysts will join Gerry there for a panel discussion on current BI trends led by IBI Chief Marketing Officer Michael Corcoron.

You can be sure all of the popular buzzwords will be used: Big Data, Predictive, Analytics, Mobile, Social, Cloud, Collaborative, Visual, just to name a few (I dare you to make a checklist and tally the results).

Starting at 11AM on Monday, there will be breakout sessions with each of the BI experts. There is no overlap, so you never have to pick one person over another. Here is the agenda for Summit 2012's Strategic Management Track of BI industry analysts:

11:00AM Boris Evelson will present "Agile BI: Overview, Trends, and Best Practices"

1:30PM Cindi Howson will present "Best Practices for BI Success"

2:45PM Rita Sallam will present "Playing Moneyball: Leveraging Analytics to Win in Your Organization"

4:00PM Mark Smith will present "Top Ten Best Practices in Predictive Analytics and Big Data"


To get a mobile Summit 2012 agenda for your phone or tablet, click here. If you are an old-fashion person who likes to carry tangible pages, there is a printable agenda for you. Other formats are available as well at the main Agenda page.

Note: don't forget to be at my Agile BI presentation on Sunday afternoon at 3:15PM (you can just consider me the opening act).

What is an IBI Site Code?

A reader recently asked, "What is this Site Code that Information Builders wants?"

When you purchase software from Information Builders, they will assign you a four digit customer number. Of course, IBI sold software to over 9,999 companies so they started using alphanumeric characters in that code. For example, you might get assigned something like 99AB.

Legend has it that since the start of the company IBI has been keeping these numbers in a 1970s ledger book. Personally, I picture the scene from the Mission Impossible movie where the US Embassy has a highly secure room for storing the NOC list, but perhaps IBI is not that fancy.

In addition to your customer number, the IBI site code has a two-digit software license code. The four digit customer number is separated from the two-digit license code with a period. So if you own the FOCUS 4GL, the WebFOCUS enterprise BI product, and the iWay integration software, you might have three site codes like 99AB.01, 99AB.02, and 99AB.03.

If you make licensing changes (e.g., changing from lease to direct purchase), IBI might sunset your original site code (like 99AB.03) and give you something new (like 99AB.13). It is also not impossible to get a completely different customer code.

Using a site code, you can log into IBI's TechSupport site and download software updates. If you do not have a TechSupport account, all you need to activate one is your site code and the name of your company as described on the software license. Go to this link to setup a new user account.

If you have any other questions, just let me know. 

Partner Intelligence Moves to Sunday!

Partner Intelligence has moved!

Not in the sense that you must change your address book, but you will need to update your calendar.

A week ago, I blogged that my presentation at Information Builders' Summit 2012 would take place on Monday. Well, change is in the air. My session has been moved to a new track, date, and time.

To see my presentation on Avoiding Big BI Blunders, you will need to be at Summit on Sunday, June 3rd, by 3:15PM Eastern.

I'm pleased in at least one sense since this agenda modification takes me out of a negative situation. Had I spoken on Monday, I would have competed for audience members against Mark Smith of Ventana Research.

It's great for you too, since you are now free on Monday 2:45PM to see Mark's presentation on the Top Ten Best Practices in Predictive Analytics and Big Data. 

Despite no longer going head-to-head with Mark, my Sunday slot is not perfect.

For one thing, my scheduled flight to Orlando doesn't even arrive in time. If most Summit guests are like me, they see Sunday as a travel day. In fact, I have a hunch that most consider their first mandatory event as being the 7PM Welcome Reception's free bar.

So to give you an added incentive to fit my presentation into your plans, I am prepared to offer you a significant bribe.

Free! Free! Free!

You may have already heard that Partner Intelligence will give away an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet to one lucky Summit guest. At my Sunday presentation, I will let you sneak in an additional entry for that drawing!

But wait, there's more!

If you attend my educational yet fun session, you can register to win one of three prizes that I will give away that same hour. At the beginning of the session, I will randomly draw one attendee's name and give that lucky person a $25 Amazon gift card (not just an ordinary card, either!).

Then, in the middle of the session I will break to draw another name for a second Amazon gift card, this time worth $50!

At the end while you are filling out your appraisal form as to how great the presentation was, I will give one lucky person a $100 Amazon gift card! It might be you!

You must be there to win!

I hope you are motivated enough by blatant self-promoting bribes to join me on Sunday, June 3rd, at 3:15PM, at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, FL. Not only will you learn about Agile BI Application Development Best Practices, but you will gain an unfair advantage over hundreds of other people to win an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and perhaps even win big Amazon gift cards.

If you are less open to gratuitous enticements, perhaps you will attend just to learn how to improve your career by running successful BI application development projects. That works too.   

Take a Flat Friend to IBI Summit 2012 (Flat Gerry, that is)

Information Builders doesn't limit innovation and creativity to just producing software products like WebFOCUS.

No, they even apply it to their annual users' group conferences.

Jake Freivald, VP of Marketing, announced today a special "Flat Gerry" theme in preparation to IBI sending each Summit attendee a special gift in the mail. 

If you are attending the iWay and WebFOCUS annual event in June, you probably got this message from Jake: 

Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown’s popular children’s book is about a young boy who is flattened by a bulletin board. But he discovers some real advantages to being flat: he can slide under doors, fit between sidewalk grates, and be mailed anywhere in the world for an exciting adventure.

Well, there’s a new flat guy in town – Flat Gerry, a paper cutout of our CEO Gerry Cohen. And he’s coming to visit you soon in the US Mail.

While he’s your guest, we’d like you to produce a short video featuring Flat Gerry. 

You can show Flat Gerry learning about your organization and how you use our products. You can invite him to sit in on a team meeting. Heck, maybe he'd like to see the sights in your city!  All we ask is that you have fun and be creative. With permission, a selection of videos will be shown during the Summit 2012 keynote presentation.

Get your crayons and cameras ready!

Presentation: Avoiding BI Blunders

NOTE 2012 May 1st: Dates and times originally shown here have changed! See a later blog for more updates.

Be sure to mark your calendar for Sunday, June 3rd.

That is the day that I present at Information Builders' Summit 2012 in Orlando, FL. If you are attending, please come to my informative and fun (perhaps to the point of irreverent) session on how to avoid the big mistakes made building BI dashboards with WebFOCUS.

You will hear about using Agile techniques for BI application development and learn how to watch out for the common mistakes.

Below is the IBI agenda summary (click on the link for the complete agenda):

Avoiding Big BI Blunders: How to Run a Successful WebFOCUS Dashboard Project

Doug Lautzenheiser, Partner Intelligence

Tech Level: Getting Started

Sunday 3:15PM - 4:15PM

Executives, project managers, and technical developers will discover how to avoid common blunders involving WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) dashboards. Core foundations required before a BI initiative is initiated will be identified, and the key ingredient to "clarity" will be explained. Personal experience with tools such as low-fidelity mock-ups will be shared, and concepts such as the Magic Triangle, the Planning Fallacy, and the Versioned Release Schedule will be discussed.

If you have any questions, let me know.