• Big Data and predictive analytics - Insights into huge volumes of data (structured and unstructured) can be better shown with visualization. BI tools provide connectors into Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) to aid in the data discovery process and, in turn, provide the ability to make quicker and better decisions. The BI tools should mask the complicated mathematical formulae and algorithms designed to analyze the big data and deliver intuitive and interactive data-products.

• Visualization on mobile devices - Specific to Data Visualization and BI, one of the obvious things to look for is support for easy and seamless display on mobile devices. Many popular BI products provide this functionality out-of-the-box, but you need to make sure your BI team understands the complexity involved before you start this initiative. Extensive support from the infrastructure/networking team is a critical success factor.

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and map-based visualization - Visualizing location-based data can have a very powerful impact when the content is displayed on a map. The map interface should aid the user in performing additional data exploration on a visual level, while providing spatial context. The interface should have the capability to filter the data and provide additional detail as needed. Popular BI tools provide connectors/plug-ins to integrate seamlessly into popular mapping layers like Google Maps or
  Mapinfo.
  
  
• Animation - Another criteria discussed in this context is the support for animation. If the user wants to track how a particular metric changed over a period of time, it is easier to visualize if there is an animation script that shows the change over a period of time with one click (rather than clicking on each year). Some of the BI products available in the market support this functionality in the "Desktop mode" (using the thick-client), but do not support it when the same data-product is visualized using a web-browser. Another common issue in this regard is the support for animation only when using certain objects. For example, a popular BI tool supports animation for a bubble-graph, but it doesn't provide the same support for a map widgets.

• Stand-alone "offline" support - Once less common a few years ago, this feature is now a supported functionality by most BI tools now. It is important to ensure that the constructed data-output can work independent of a server, and not necessarily only when a connection to said server exists. This functionality can help you deploy the content on the internet without exposing the enterprise BI server to the world-wide web. Many popular BI products let you export a MIME HTML file (.mht file format) that can later be converted into Flash and HTML file formats before the content is deployed for consumption.

• Ability to drill into detail - Data visualized through graphs or by other sophisticated data-products like Dashboards or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) gain user adoption if they encourage the user to drill into data. The BI tools should provide the right platform to encourage the user to ask questions about the data being visualized and provide an option for the user to drill into the detailed granular data from the visualized data-product.

• Easy access to tabular data - Not all the business problems could be addressed by data visualization alone. BI tools should provide an interface for the user to easily toggle between a graph visualization and tabular data. This helps the user trust the visualization further and encourage user adoption.

To summarize, all the popular BI tools in the market offer advanced data visualization features and functionality, but we recommend that you perform extensive analysis before a BI tool is selected for its visualization capabilities. Setup and maintenance costs, ease of use, scalability and business understanding can greatly impact the business user adoption of the final end product.

Courtesy of B-eye Network

Business intelligence (BI) systems have long struggled with the location dimension of the data contained in everything from spreadsheets to data warehouses and the transactional business systems that feed them. 

Customer, product, or channel dimensions are visualized and analyzed with a wide variety of graphical tools. But geographic data is forced into these tools like a square peg in a round hole. 

Help is on the way. Location intelligence brings a new set of tools to the table, ones better suited to the job of tapping into geographic information meaningfully and effectively. 

Location intelligence has a role to play in these BI functions:

Reporting and Visualization

Traditional business intelligence is dominated by standardized reporting with some limited filtering available to business users. Location intelligence plays a similar role by providing maps that give users the ability to pan, zoom, drill up or down, turn geographic layers on or off, and do some limited filtering for thematic mapping.

Within all leading BI front-end tools, interactive maps are replacing or augmenting standard table and chart views of geographic data. Business data is typically mapped as dots or icons, shaded polygons, or "hot spots" based upon some characteristic of the data, such as sales volume or cost. Recently more advanced geographic visualizations such as three-dimensional representations and space-time animations have found their way into some BI tools and end-user dashboards. 

Whether simple or advanced, visualizing data on maps is often a vast improvement over pie and bar charts, in many cases, it leads business analysts and other users to findings and conclusions in much less time and with less effort than spinning , slicing and dicing a cube of tabular information looking for spatial relationships – relationships they might never even find using the old method.

Data Integration and Quality

Geographic data shares many of the same problems associated with other data, such as multiple source systems and spatial data formats, data quality issues and semantic inconsistencies. But it adds a few more, like different geographic reference systems (so things don't line up on the map) or different spatial dimensions (for example, one system maps buildings as points, another as polygons). 

Location intelligence technology can help with spatial data integration and quality improvements. Tools are available to convert various spatial data formats; re-project data from one coordinate system to another; and clean up and validate spatial data before it's used. The goal is to create a single version of the truth for spatial data that can be used throughout an organization to create accurate, meaningful and consistent maps and serve as a foundation for advanced spatial analysis. In the new world of self-service reporting tools for end users, effective processes for spatial data integration and quality management are critical.

Advanced Spatial Analysis

In both business intelligence and location intelligence, a relatively small group of people play with the data to discover what they don't know about it, employing heavier-duty analysis methods such as ad hoc querying or data mining. Somewhere, there is an imaginary line that divides simple location intelligence from advanced spatial analysis. One way to think about the line is to say that all analysis that can be done in the average person's head through visualization is on the simple side, while analytical tasks that require  spatial statistics, clustering and forecasting or other spatial computations and models falls on the advanced side. 

In short, if you can’t get it from looking at the map, you need some advanced techniques. Advanced spatial analysis tools relate to familiar advanced analytics software for statistical analysis, data mining, real-time forecasting and business optimization, but they're modified to address the unique characteristics of spatial data and relationships.

Collaboration

Social networks are driving a rush toward increased support for collaborative BI capabilities. Standardized reporting, querying and advanced analytics all have their limits, and it's often difficult to uncover information about the cause and impact of business problems and corrective actions that could be taken. But often, multiple users working collaboratively can fill in data gaps, raise new considerations and make collective judgments and decisions.

Maps have always been magnets for people, as evidenced by the countless social media sites that use Google Maps, and many business professionals want the same kind of collaborative experience to be available in the workplace. These "prosumers" have been heard, and maps now can easily be created, shared, annotated, extended and re-shared using cloud offerings without the need for IT resources or in-depth location intelligence skills. Self-service has come to location intelligence along with collaboration.

It's easy to see the parallels between business intelligence and location intelligence since  they share major areas of focus and serve similar purposes. But until now they have evolved independently of each other. Today, a perfect storm of technology, data and a DIY mentality is bringing these two ships together and creating a wave of intelligent maps and location-based analytics.

With debt troubles in Europe and economic woes in China holding back global economic growth, CEOs have to ask themselves, “Am I ready for what’s coming down the pike in 2013?”

One way to get ready is to deploy intelligent forecasting tools that help you strategize for the coming year.

What Is Intelligent Forecasting?

There’s no one hard-and-fast definition of intelligent forecasting, more widely known as business intelligence (BI). By and large, intelligent forecasting is a data analytics business strategy; it allows companies to obtain real-time intelligence via operational systems that warehouse data, analyze that data, and send “forecasting” results back through the pipeline to corporate decision makers.

From a CEO’s point of view, intelligent forecasting focuses on administration and analysis. Its tools bring together forecasting data gathered from operational administration sources, and merges them for further review and analysis by corporate managers, giving them better data to weigh before allocating resources to a given business initiative.

Make no mistake, business intelligence is big business, with data analysis the fastest growing sector in the BI market.

According to Gartner, the business intelligence market (including data warehouses and CRM analytics), has grown from a $57 billion market in 2010 to an estimated $81 billion by 2014. Intelligent forecasting, the data analysis side of business intelligence, accounted for $30 billion of the $57 billion in market assets in 2010. Gartner expects that number to grow significantly by the end of the decade.

“Analytics is the combustion engine of business, and it will be necessary for organizations that want to grow, innovate and optimize efficiency,” says Rita Salam, a BI analyst at Gartner. “Given its far-reaching impact, it is one of the few software markets that thrive even in adversity.”

Intelligent Forecasting in 2013

What trends in intelligent forecasting can CEOs expect for 2013? Here are a few good indicators:

BI and intelligent forecasting will overtake cloud computing. Cloud computing has had a nice ride, but data analysis forecasting will supplant it in 2013. That’s the conclusion drawn from a recent Gartner survey of 2,335 U.S. chief information officers. A separate survey from the consultancy outfit MorganFranklin says 75% of C-level managers say they will increase the BI proportion (or at least maintain current levels) of their data analysis budgets.

Geography matters. CEOs looking to leverage intelligence forecasting may wonder what geography has to do with data analysis. In a word, plenty. Industry insiders say there’s increased demand for analyzing data from a geographical viewpoint (think integrated mapping  for new business locations, or overlapping statistical data onto a digital map for more vertical analysis). The market has a term for that, and it’s called “location intelligence.” Expect to hear more about location intelligence in 2013.

BI goes mobile. Any corporate manager with an Android smartphone or anApple iPad recognizes the advantage of having critical analysis data delivered straight to one’s mobile device. With security anxieties over mobile devices abating, the delivery of key forecasting data to smartphones and tablets should be a rising trend in 2013.

Developing BI talent internally. C-level managers have historically relied on outside information-technology vendors to provide talent and expertise on business intelligence issues. But that could be going away. For starters, good data forecasting talent is rare – no surprise for a technology still in its infancy. Colleges are rapidly incorporating data analysis classwork into their technology curriculums, but progress is glacial. Increasingly, CEOs will be looking to develop intelligent forecasting talent in-house.

With intelligent data forecasting on the rise, corporate decision makers have a choice: adapt or be left behind. With data intelligence analysis already earning ROI credibility, corporate leaders had better get with the program – and fast.

This article from Critigen’s Community Health Team Leader, Kenny Ratliff, highlights what GIS can do for health data in our communities and nationally.  Ratliff reviews how Critigen’s free app for the iPad allows users to understand how traditional BI (Business Intelligence) & GIS can come together to make big data and health data meaningful to professionals and ordinary people alike. 

With an increasing awareness of the cost of healthcare and the relative costs of prevention and treatment, health data are more important than ever to making wise investments in healthcare services and infrastructure.  Healthcare professionals, politicians and ordinary citizens all have an interest in understanding the state of our health and contributing to solutions.

Critigen, a GIS consulting & solutions company, has launched a free iPad app to help executives, health professionals and ordinary citizens visualize and understand the Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI).  The CHSI contain a variety of health trends and health predictors.  With the Health Indicators iPad app, anyone can view the indicators by region, state or county, comparing nearby areas and see trends by area.  The app also supports the classic ‘rollup’ functionality of business intelligence, grouping indicators by category and providing an overall assessment of the category for each region, allowing users to drill into each category to see specific metrics at various geographic levels.

This app changes the health data game, and the best way to really understand it is to download Health Indicators to your iPad (free) from the Apple App store and try it out. The intuitive touch interface makes it easy to navigate and get comfortable with the tool. The way they aggregated and organized the data around geography and metrics categories provide the information you’re interested in without overwhelming you.  The data are organized in categories to make them more accessible to ordinary people and to health care professionals:

• Good Start – how well we care for infants
• Staying Healthy – how well we follow medical advice
• Managing Disease – how well we manage potential fatal conditions
• Getting Help – how easy is it to get basic health care
• Paying for Care – how affordable health care is

The app launched in time for Health Datapalooza 2012 and got main stage billing.  Tyler Huehmer, Director of Critigen Labs, told the audience, “Through informational design and the integration of GIS, we’re able to visually access data that was otherwise difficult to access or difficult to understand.  This exploratory tool allows someone to browse information geographically and focus on what’s important to them.”

Critigen launched the app as a corporate citizenship initiative, applying Critigen’s geospatial technology expertise to make health indicators data accessible to everyone.  Critigen also hopes it inspires the Health community to embrace the potential that geographic information – also referred to as location intelligence or geographic information systems (GIS) – has to improve the way we invest in healthcare, prevention and infrastructure.

Courtesy of IT Web

New research by World Wide Worx (WWW) showsdigital mapping services are a key “secret weapon” in South African business and a key emergent trend in local IT.

The Digital Mapping in SA 2013 survey was conducted by WWW with the backing of digital mapping provider mapIT, and included telephonic interviews with 400 small and medium enterprise (SME) decision-makers and 111 corporate IT decision-makers.

According to the survey, 76% of local corporations and 38% of SMEs are spending more than 2% of their IT budgets on mapping services.

“The same proportion of SMEs spend more than R50 000 a year on digital mapping, while 79% of corporates have higher budgets – 22% of corporates spend more than R500 000 on digital mapping every year,” says WWW MD Arthur Goldstuck.

Goldstuck says that while for consumers digital mapping is essentially about getting directions, for businesses that is only the beginning.

The most common uses of digital mapping services among businesses include asset tracking (such as fleet management), vehicle tracking and recovery and navigation. The standout reasons for adoptions among both SMEs and corporates are security, efficiency and productivity.

The survey also found location-based marketing is growing significantly. Forty-one percent of corporations are using location-based marketing, with a further 15% intending to do so in 2013. A third of SMEs are also already making use of such services, while another 19% also plan to do so in 2013.

“We will see the saturation of the use of location-based marketing among local businesses in the coming years,” notes Goldstuck.

“SMEs usually lag behind corporations by several years when it comes to the adoption of new technologies. For SMEs to invest in new technologies, the business case has to be very clear.

“For example, when ADSL prices first started coming down, between 2003-2009 we saw a perfect ‘X’ of the fall of dial-up and the rise of ADSL. For almost any other form of technology, SMEs lag behind in terms of adoption. But here we see they are taking up location-based marketing at the same pace as corporate – it’s just one of those rare technologies.”

According to Goldstuck, another key finding was the extent to which budgets are growing for digital mapping services. “Two-thirds of large corporations and SMEs alike – 69% and 66%, respectively – intend to increase their spending on digital mapping services in 2013.”

According to the survey, the biggest barrier to adoption of these services among SMEs is a lack of knowledge about the tools, while for corporations there were no significant obstacles.

MapIT MD Etienne Louw says: “Digital mapping is proving to be the hidden secret weapon of South African business. The research underlines the extent to which large and small businesses alike depend on digital maps, not only for navigation and tracking, but also for efficiency, productivity and security.”

MAPCITE and Complexus Announce Partnership.

Complexus to grow customer base for MAPCITE’s leading Enterprise GIS / Location Intelligence Solution in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

MAPCITE is a location intelligence software company committed to helping organizations gain more insight from data, by repeatedly solving key problems for customers in the commercial, government and third sectors. MAPCITE and its products have earned a reputation for innovation, ease of use, speed, and the highest quality user experience.  As a result of their innovation with the Microsoft stack, MAPCITE are now members of the prestigious Microsoft Biz Spark One community.

With a growing list of clients on the African Continent and demand growing for location intelligence solutions, the partnership with Complexus is part of MAPCITEs’ strategy to expand into Africa and help client’s extract maximum value from geographical tagged data.   The MAPCITE product range takes the completely inexperienced "mapper" through simple to use and FREE applications, MAPCITE for Excel, through to the extremely powerful Web and On-Premises applications such as Microsoft SharePoint. For the more experienced Data and GIS user there are options for CRM BI Integration, Animated and Floor Plan Mapping, Specialist Mobile Phone Reporting Apps, Geo-Marketing and Massive Spatial Scalability plotting hundreds of millions of transactions in real time.

Nick Bradshaw, Director of Complexus, said: “We are really pleased to be representing MAPCITE in South Africa and wider Sub-Saharan Africa.  It’s a perfect fit for our portfolio of tools that integrate with the Microsoft SharePoint platform.  We see many applications for the MAPCITE product and when integrated with the customers’ existing SharePoint deployment it can add value on many levels such as collaboration and sharing of location based data in the retail sector for example, right through to visualising exploration and survey data in the oil & gas sector.  Many clients in a diverse set of markets can benefit from using MAPCITE and we will be officially launching the product at SHARE 2013 conference, The Sandton Sun, Johannesburg, 11-13 March 2013”

MAPCITE commented, “Our partnership with Complexus reflects the growing demand we see in Africa for GIS / Location Intelligence applications.  We already have a growing customer base in Africa and Complexus will help us service existing and new clients locally.  We are delighted to be working with Nick Bradshaw, benefiting from his considerable expertise in building markets for world-class business applications, as well as his knowledge of the African market.”