Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2016

Hi, 22 year old me..

If I were 22   May is my birthday month, so a time for celebrations and introspection. In interviews, I often ask our applicants to pretend they are 60, and look back on their careers.   Their dreams range from leaving a legacy to being able to retire by the age of 45. At 22, I had taken my first steps on the career ladder.   I had been promoted from being a PA and Installation Secretary (setting up PoS installations for NCR’s large retailers) to becoming a full time programmer. I had made some extremely poor academic decisions, and realised I had to make some very good career choices.   Software development was a relatively new field when I was in my early 20s, and it became an exciting and fulfilling career. Based on my history what advice would I give myself or a new graduate? It doesn’t matter what you have studied, or what your first job is. Keep looking for your passion, find what makes you happy. If it’s money, and you don’t mind being a little unchallenged, a

Is 2016 the year of mainstreaming Business Intelligence and Analytics?

Is 2016 the year of mainstreaming Business Intelligence and Analytics? In IT circles, IoT and Analytics are mainstream!   In the real business world, there appears to be an appetite and a genuine need, but the question is “Is it really happening?” I have rather belatedly read Ajeet Singh’s article – 2016 Anti-Predictions for Analytics, and found it very interesting.   Some of the statistics mentioned were a surprise eg 99% of data still being on premise. Business technology trends do take multiple paths.   I remember when we first started selling biometric solutions at Accsys over ten years ago,  we would get in the door with biometrics, but the majority of clients still felt safer with cards.   It is the same with Employee Self Service, the take up is happening, but it is still largely at the early adopter stage in the SME market, in spite of overwhelmingly strong ROI indicators. So for the majority of businesses, Analytics are still going through a growth stage o