Our world today is swamped with data. More data than ever before is available to help us make decisions. Whether this abundance of information is actually helpful to decision-making or instead leads to analysis-paralysis depends largely on our system for prioritizing...
Picture the following scenario: The boss calls at 3:30 P.M. wanting a report on specific data and charts for a presentation first thing the next morning. Quickly, you run an SQL statement to dump the data into a spreadsheet, filter it down to exactly what is needed,...
You’ve heard the expression “first things first”? It sounds obvious, but as you’ll see, we can’t take anything for granted or assume things will get done as expected unless we take pains to spell out the necessary steps. To start with first things first, it’s very...
At Financial Aid offices across the country, managing even the most essential reports and information can feel insurmountable. This was the case at Lansing Community College (LCC) in Lansing, Michigan, where Financial Aid employees were bogged down by ad hoc reports...
These days, it seems like everybody has an easy-to-access place to hold all the digital information that’s important to them. No, not smart phones! We’re talking about the personal data dump. It Starts With A Question It all begins innocently enough: the end-user...