How To Be The Data Hero

As a kid you always want to be the hero like in the movies and comic books, but as you grow up reality sets in that you can’t be a hero especially finding yourself stuck behind a desk in the IT department of a large company.

How you ask? It’s simple really, as IT people we hold the data keys to the business and not many people get to see what we have behind closed doors. The ERP system holds a treasure trove of information that can help your business leaders and sales people make better decisions to improve sales and drive up margins.

By now you must be thinking well there is so much data in there and how will they ever make heads or tails out of it? This is where the Hero part comes in, the answer is Business intelligence (BI). I am not just talking about you creating report after report and being a slave to the requests of the people that need the data NO. I am talking about being the Hero and giving them an easy, simple self-service BI tool. Imagine being able to setup a system quickly that allows the end user to get to the relevant data they need to make better decisions for the business. Let’s take it a step further, let’s make sure they are not running a 5 year history report against the live ERP system causing the system to be unusable by everyone else, let’s make sure the user can only see the data that their manager wants them to see, and let’s give them the ability to visualise the data and collaborate with other users on the system.

So let’s think about this, we can the hero and not by saving a puppy from a burning building but by being a data hero. The kind of hero that took the locked up data in the ERP database and gave it to the people that needed it most, in a simple fast front end tool that anyone can use. And you get to protect yourself from having to worry about users changing the data in the ERP system by having the data sitting in its own database that can be queried quickly without a performance hit or accidently changing the data on the ERP system.

We may not be able to fly or save a puppy or even be able to wear a cape, but being a hero can be defined by helping those around you access data that allows them to help themselves. And that has to make you feel good about yourself.

**EDIT 27 October 2014 - Part two of this blog is now available by clicking here **.

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