KEEP IT SIMPLE
Most Popular Keep it Simple Posts
Here is the all-time Keep it Simple blog top 20:
- 9 Holes of Sales Analytics Best Practices
- Sales Analytics for the Board of Directors
- What is Your Data Actually Telling You?
- SaaS BI - Analytic Aspirin in a Difficult Economy?
- What’s in Store for Business Intelligence in 2008
- Guest Blogger Alert - The LucidEra Opportunity
- We Couldn’t Get the Answers
- Everything is a Platform
- What’s in Store for Business Intelligence in 2009
- Transforming Marketing’s Traditional 4 P’s into SaaS’s 5 A’s
- Take the SaaS BI Survey
- Sales 2.0 Data Points and Anecdotes
- Using Analytics to Avoid Wasting Time
- The Call for Basic Numeracy
- What is an Analytic Application?
- What is Cloud Computing?
- IDC Predictions for 2009
- Ashe on SaaS
- A Visionary Who Thinks Clouds will Cloud His Vision
- The Power of Pie Charts
Thanks for reading!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 7:03 am
Now You See It
Data visualization guru Stephen Few has published a new book called, “Now You See It.” Looks like a good beach read. Here’s a summary from Amazon:
“Employing a methodology that is primarily learning by example and “thinking with our eyes,” this manual features graphs and practical analytical techniques that can be applied to a broad range of data analysis tools—including the most commonly used Microsoft Excel. This approach is particularly valuable to those who need to make sense of quantitative business data by discerning meaningful patterns, trends, relationships, and exceptions that reveal business performance, potential problems and opportunities, and hints about the future. It provides practical skills that are useful to managers at all levels and to those interested in keeping a keen eye on their business.”
If you often don’t know what your data is actually telling you, love charts, or are simply looking for some dashboard visualization tips and tricks, be sure to check it out.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 2:25 pm
How SaaS Changes the Relationship of Business Users to BI
The Data Warehouse Institute published a wide-ranging interview with LucidEra founder Ken Rudin today that focuses on the impact of SaaS and Cloud Computing on the business intelligence market. Questions asked include:
- What’s the difference between software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing?
- Why do business intelligence vendors and practitioners seem to focus so much on implementation rather than functions such as data visualization and interpretation, which is presumably what they really want to do?
- How does SaaS BI solve this issue?
- What role does IT play in a SaaS implementation?
- What role does the business side play? What role does the business side play?
- How has the role of software buyer changed with SaaS?
- What is LucidEra’s approach to SaaS and BI?
Be sure to check out the Q&A here. And because you can’t add comments on the TWDI site, please share your feedback / comments below or on Digg.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 9:22 am
LucidInsights for May
Here are a few of the articles we included in our May newsletter:
- 9 Tips to Boost Sales Now (Our favorite - #2: “You Get What You Measure.”)
- The New Rules of Sales Enablement (Some great sales resources from Reachforce and Kadient.)
- Why B2B Salespeople Say they Win Software Sales? (Marketing messaging is last! Ouch!)
- Salesforce.com: Punchlist for VPs of Sales After Rollout (Author of the new Salesforce book offers up some tips.)
- Feeling the Flow (Some classic sales lines from the trenches…I mean Garth.)
To receive the complete LucidEra newsletter (which also highlights our most popular blog post), feel free to register here.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 10:24 pm
Jigsaw Webinar: Do You Have the Sales Metrics that Matter
Join us on June 24th for an interactive webinar with our partner (and customer) Jigsaw. LucidEra founder Ken Rudin will discuss the growing importance of sales analytics to sales success in this difficult economic climate. With a focus on Salesforce.com customers, this webinar will review the critical metrics that sales managers and reps should be measuring, monitoring and taking action on in order to:
- Increase revenue
- Decrease pipeline risk
- Improve forecast accuracy in this difficult economic climate.
We hope you can attend. Please register here.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 1:29 pm
SaaS Business Intelligence and Sales Management Surveys
It must be that time of year. Lately, I’ve received a number of emails asking me to complete surveys on topics that I know many of our readers are also interested in. Naturally, I’ve decided to share them here for you all complete. They only take a few minutes.
- Cutter Consortium: Corporate Adoption of SaaS BI (feel free to mention your friends at LucidEra!)
By the way, I’ve also received the findings of this BeyeResearch report on SaaS business intelligence. We did not sponsor this research so LucidEra is not featured unfortunately, but the report does contains some very interesting survey data on why SaaS is being considered for business intelligence, where it’s being used, and the primary challenges and requirements.
- EcSell Institute Sales Management Survey (LucidEra partner focused on best-practice sharing for sales managers)
- Sales Management 2.0 Poll (What new features will be most useful to you on this great site for sales managers? So far it looks like a Sales Wiki is the most popular choice.)
posted by Darren Cunningham at 1:13 pm
Amazing Customer Support - When it Rains it Pours!
Kudos to the LucidEra support team today on the Force.com AppExchange!
Check out this 5-star review for Pipeline Insight:
As always, thanks to our joint Salesforce.com / LucidEra customers for taking the time to post their feedback on the AppExchange. We appreciate the continued support!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 3:47 pm
Ken Rudin is the CMO of LucidEra. He co-founded the on-demand business intelligence company in 2005. Ken is a veteran of the rapidly growing software as a service industry with over 7 years of experience as an executive with leading on-demand software vendors. These include roles at Salesforce.com, at Netsuite (as an advisor), and at Siebel's on-demand division.
Darren Cunningham is the VP of Marketing at LucidEra. Prior to joining LucidEra he was the Category Director for salesforce.com AppExchange Analytics and Data Management. Before joining the on-demand world, he spent over 7 years at Business Objects.