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The Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications by Larissa T. Moss and Shaku Atre is one of the most popular books written on the subject. What’s surprising is that the book was originally published in 2003, but continues to be one of the most comprehensive resources on the subject of BI roadmaps. Below we will briefly mention some of the positive and negative feedback that this book has received.

Positive Acclaims

More Than Charts And Graphs – A lot of the business intelligence roadmap books that deal with data management are simply about the latest ways to present information. While it is important to know how to create clean looking PowerPoint presentations, Excel graphs, and other charts, there is more to business intelligence than presentation. Yes, it is true that you have to present the information well, but you also have to make sure that you have the right information in the first place. This book helps you set up a business intelligence (BI) system that will gather the correct information and the book shows you how to present the information in a useful well.

Great Metadata Information – For those of you who are still a little confused about what metadata is and how it should best be used, The Business Intelligence Roadmap can help. Almost all the reviews we have read share one similarity: they loved the discussion on metadata.

Great Step By Step Guide – Some books simply offer general information, but don’t help you get the job done. The authors took great care to ensure that this book would help you set up your own business intelligence system. The beginning of each chapter has a checklist of action items that can help you know what you need to get done to get your own BI system operating correctly. The book really serves as your personal business intelligence strategy or roadmap.

Criticisms

Some of the chapters lacked extreme depth (in some cases the chapters were only a few pages long). The truth is that it is hard to know how in-depth you should go when you are writing on a topic. The authors often chose to only write a few pages so that the reader wouldn’t feel completely overwhelmed.

Some readers wanted more information on specific BI products. These readers wanted the authors to rate some of the expensive database and BI software out there so that they could make smart purchasing decisions. The authors rarely reviewed any business intelligence products.

Overall The Business Intelligence Roadmap by Moss and Atre is still one of the best books on this topic (which is amazing considering how much technology has changed since 2003). Anyone dealing with BI can definitely benefit from this book.

When a company decides to go with video conferencing, they are doing themselves a huge favor. Video conferencing is going to cut overall costs with the company since it is going to eliminate the need to travel to other businesses, as well as the cost of staying overnight in these places for their employees. Though, the initial investment into video conferencing equipment may be expensive, businesses should look at this as an investment for their future. They are going to make this money back, especially because video conferencing opens up a whole new consumer base since they are no longer limited to just the area in which the business is located. However, when having conference technology, there are problems that occur. But, these problems are usually easy to fix without having to call in a professional.

One of the biggest problems that people report is sound issues. These sound issues can be having no sound at all, or finding that there is an echo with the sound. Some people even report that the sound is picking up everything that is happening in the entire building, leading to so much background noise that it is impossible to hear the other person participating in the video conference. In order to fix this, the person should first make sure that the microphones and speakers are on. If not, then that is why the sound may not be coming out. In addition, they should make sure that the microphones have not become muted, which does happen on accident. For the echo that they may be hearing, the person should make sure that the microphone is at least thirty-six inches away from those that are speaking. When the microphone is too close, echoes can occur. These are very sensitive microphones thus there is no need to speak directly into one with it close to the person’s mouth. To eliminate background noise, the person should make sure that they mute the microphone when they are not using it, this is going to help those that are on the other end of the video conference.

Overall, these are just some small problems that the company is going to find easy to fix when they occur. If the problem keeps recurring then they may have to call in a professional or a tech expert to make sure that everything is installed correctly. As an incorrect installation can cause the sound quality to dramatically diminish and give a poor performance in a free video conference.

The key to a good internal communication strategy is defining the headings and template structure of your communication reports early on. This article shows you how to use the feedback from stakeholders to inform some of the content and structure of a standard template.

The starting point when planning out your communication reports is defining who your stakeholders are. These are the people who you will ultimately send out reports to and are the decision-makers, influencers and individuals who need to give consent for project decisions. These can include heads of departments, creative management leads, board directors and regular employees.

For an internal communication you have the flexibility of contacting these people directly to establish a number of key facts. In particular you want to find out what data or information they will require from you on a regular basis. You should clarify how often they would be interested in getting these types of reports. You may not be able to provide reports as frequently as they would hope you should aim to standardize the days or weeks when reports are sent out.

The feedback from stakeholders should detail what content they are particularly interested in and this can start to find your internal communication strategy template. At a basic level your template/report will include items such as project objectives, a summary of what progress has been made since the previous report, budgetary information, some of the milestones that have been hit, issues and risks and any opportunities which have been noticed.

Take this as your starting point and add in any feedback from stakeholders or department-specific information you need to include. For example software departments will not need to include financial/budgetary information to such an extent as other departments may only be interested in progress being made on internal development (i.e. focus on milestones, issues & risks).