Posted on June 23, 2005
Filed Under Business Intelligence, Open Source | Leave a Comment
Business Intelligence helps us understand the details about customers that are crucial to the success of any organization. Traditionally these offerings are very expensive due to licensing fees for the several components. Of late, some momentum has been seen around Open Source and maturity of projects suitable for BI. But we have only heard of the adoption of Open Source in the Infrastructure layer - OS, database, App Servers etc. Very little attention has been paid to the software required to build and deliver Business Intelligence. That is, until now.
Lets take a subset of some of the BI offerings, and see how Open Source solutions match up against them.
- Databases: PostGres (or Bizgres) and MySQL.
- ETL: Enhydra Octopus and Clover
- OLAP: Mondrian and GreenPlum
- Dashboards (Portal approach): JBoss Portal, JetSpeed, LifeRay and Gluecode (now owned by IBM.
- Reporting: Jasper Reports, BIRT
If this doesn’t sound promising, Pentaho is planning a Open Source BI distribution that brings all of the above together and some more. This sounds very exciting for myself and for my company, which has been providing Open Source solutions for almost 5 years.
Technorati Tags: Pentaho, JasperReports, MySQL, JBoss, Portal, Business Intelligence, BI
Posted on June 22, 2005
Filed Under Marketing | Leave a Comment
I had an interesting lunch with one of the sales guy, this afternoon. Over lunch he talked about his need for some kind of Campaign/Lead Management system. I will refrain from getting into the specifics of the discussion or my comments. But later in the day, I just had mindmap of what makes up a Lead Generation toolkit. Presented below is my mindmap, created using FreeMind, showing some of the ways we can collect leads
While the mindmap may not reflect the complete toolkit, it does gives us an idea on where to start. Just getting a Lead Management System does not suffice, we need to augment it with the other supporting elements. Some of the elements above are not only less intrusive but can convey your company’s message easily and with clarity. Obviously the content needs to focus on the potential customer’s needs, issues and concerns.This does not mean that marketing budgets are not justified. Companies should invest in marketing automation systems, but they need to assess a few things before.
1. Do we have all the supporting elements in place?
2. Are we mining our existing customer base for upsell opportunities?
3. Do we have a staff that is thirsty and can find the customer pains?
If you answered No to atleast one of these, then you know where to start. Let me know what you think.
Posted on June 21, 2005
Filed Under Management | Leave a Comment
When I ranted about Managing Expectations here, I have been wanting to talk about what makes a good manager. You may have well understood what the intial expectations are, but if the manager has ‘other’ things in his mind - its not resuls as expected.
Some of the necessary traits (in no specified order) a good manager should possess are:
- Good Managers empower their employees.
- Delegate tasks, big and small, and follow up.
- Allow yourself to be questioned.
- Be clear and seek clarity.
- Communicate, and often.
- Have a reasonable feedback mechanism.
- Be truthful, and be a coach.
- Give credit, and reprimand with reasons.
I have intentionally left out leadership qualities, as a manager does not always have to be a leader. What other qualities come to your mind?
Loading ...