Most of us don’t normally associate Business Intelligence (BI) with small- or medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The huge investment required to hire data-delving specialists makes us think BI is only for larger organizations. But this is no longer the case. Not only does a growing selection of self-service tools make BI more affordable for SMBs, but it also makes data management more efficient, given that your business probably creates and holds more data than you realize, making it easier for you to get going. It’s time you start harnessing data that will help you to make more strategic business decisions.

You’ve already got the data you need

It’s easy to underestimate the amount of data your SMB already has at its disposal. In every area of your business, from finance and sales to customer relations and website management, the software packages you use to simplify your everyday operations are packed with reams of information that most of us don’t even think twice about. By talking to key stakeholders in your organization’s various departments, you can get an idea of the kind of data you already have, how it’s generated, and where it’s stored. You can then start to think about using BI tools to transform that information into meaningful business insights that will inform your decision-making. No need for you to invest in time-consuming data generation from scratch!

Self-service BI tools are plentiful — and affordable

The emergence of self-service BI puts useful business analytics within reach of smaller business owners who lack the fancy-pants budgets of larger corporations. In fact, there are numerous self-service BI tools that you can use to get started in this area without even spending a dime. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful application that’s pleasingly user-friendly, and most businesses will find the functions they need in the free version. Zoho Analytics has a low entry-level cost, too, and the slightly pricier yet still affordable Tableau is another option that’s worth exploring.

It’s easy to get started

BI is an intimidating term, especially for the average business owner. But by taking small steps, it’s easy for anyone to get started — and before you know it, you’ll be enjoying the benefits of having data-driven, intelligence-based insights that will enable you to make better business decisions.

Most self-service BI tools come with built-in suggestions for reports that businesses commonly run and find useful. Other worthwhile statistics to explore include the percentage of your clients who cancel within a set period, website landing pages that generate the longest visits, your most profitable individual products or services, the days or months in which you generate your highest revenues, and which of your clients bring in the most revenue and profit.

Truly harnessing data is the future of the business world — it’s how companies like yours can make smarter decisions that increase efficiency and profitability. And having self-service tools available means SMBs no longer need a crazy budget to be able to afford the benefits of BI. To find out more about putting in place the tools that can help you do smarter business, just give us a call.

The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed that it has hit Facebook with a maximum $500,000 ($645,000) fine around the way it mishandled user data following the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year.

The ICO announced its intention to hand Facebook the fine back in July and it said today that it had not changed its mind after hearing the social network’s responses to key questions raised. While $500,000 is a drop in the ocean for the U.S. company, it represents the maximum allowable punishment under UK law, which is the significant part to focus on here.

The introduction of GDPR has given the ICO the power to issue fines of up to £17 million ($22 million) or four percent of a company’s global turnover — that’s potentially up to $1.6 billion in Facebook’s case. Luckily for the U.S. firm, though, that isn’t possible since this investigation began back in May 2017 following questions around digital influence on the Brexit vote.

In the case of Cambridge Analytica, the ICO found that at least one million UK users were among the 87 million Facebook users whose private data was harvested by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research (GSR).

While the issue was identified in 2015, GSR and Kogan were not booted from Facebook’s platform until this year. That led the British organization to conclude that beyond failing to “make suitable checks on apps and developers using its platform,” Facebook “did not do enough to ensure those who continued to hold it had taken adequate and timely remedial action.” Indeed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted that the decision was a mistake.

“Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better,” Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement.

“We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation. The fine would inevitably have been significantly higher under the GDPR. One of our main motivations for taking enforcement action is to drive meaningful change in how organizations handle people’s personal data,” she added.

Denham is slated to present an update on the investigation to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee on November 6, but she said work on the topic of digital influence on politics will continue beyond that date.

“There are still bigger questions to be asked and broader conversations to be had about how technology and democracy interact and whether the legal, ethical and regulatory frameworks we have in place are adequate to protect the principles on which our society is based,” Denham added.

We’ve contacted Facebook for a response to today’s announcement.

Minds, a decentralized social network, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from Medici Ventures, Overstock.com’s venture arm. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne will join the Minds Board of Directors.

What is a decentralized social network? The creators, who originally crowdfunded their product, see it as an anti-surveillance, anti-censorship, and anti-“big tech” platform that ensures that no one party controls your online presence. And Minds is already seeing solid movement.

“In June 2018, Minds saw an enormous uptick in new Vietnamese of hundreds of thousands users as a direct response to new laws in the country implementing an invasive ‘cybersecurity’ law which included uninhibited access to user data on social networks like Facebook and Google (who are complying so far) and the ability to censor user content,” said Minds founder Bill Ottman.

“There has been increasing excitement in recent years over the power of blockchain technology to liberate individuals and organizations,” said Byrne. “Minds’ work employing blockchain technology as a social media application is the next great innovation toward the mainstream use of this world-changing technology.”

Interestingly, Minds is a model for the future of hybrid investing, a process of raising some cash via token and raising further cash via VC. This model ensures a level of independence from investors but also allows expertise and experience to presumably flow into the company.

Ottman, for his part, just wants to build something revolutionary.

“The rise of an open source, encrypted and decentralized social network is crucial to combat the big-tech monopolies that have abused and ignored users for years. With systemic data breaches, shadow-banning and censorship, people over the world are demanding a digital revolution. User-safety, fair economies, and global freedom of expression depend on it – we are all in this battle together,” said Ottman.

Of all the things to add to the blockchain, wine makes a lot of sense. Given the need for provenance for every grape and barrel, it’s clear that the ancient industry could use a way to track ingredients from farm to glass. VinX, an Israeli company founded by Jacob Ner-david, is ready to give it a try.

According to a release, the plan is to create a “token-based digital wine futures platform based on the Bordeaux futures model” that lets you track wine from end to end “at a cost bearable to the industry.”

Investment banker Gil Picovsky joined Ner-david to build out the service.

“I was relating to Gil my frustrations with the way most wine is sold, and I had some early thoughts around using blockchain and tokens to radically remake the wine industry,” said Ner-david. “Together Gil and I developed the core concepts of VinX, and started to actively devote ourselves full time to VinX in November 2017.”

“VinX is democratizing the capital structure of the wine industry by bringing consumers in direct contact with producers early in the wine-making cycle,” said Ner-david. “We are riding the wave of direct-to-consumer. In addition, because we are registering all wine futures as tokens on a blockchain, we are bringing a powerful validating force that will go a long way toward reducing fraud.”

Overstock’s investment arm, Medici Ventures, is not reporting how much cash they are dumping into VinX but the company claims that “it is a seven-figure investment.”

The tool will help reduce the rate of fakery in winemaking. Experts estimate that 20 percent of all wine in the world is counterfeit. VinX will follow individual bottles from filling to drinking, ensuring a bottle is real.

Ner-david is also the co-founder of Jezreel Valley Winery, a boutique winery in Israel.

“We want to use modern technologies, including blockchain and tokening assets, in bringing consumers in direct contact with wineries around the world, humanizing the connection, and leaving more value in the hands of wineries and wine lovers,” he said.

Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts have been railing for years against the centralized world of banks, but many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. But what if blockchain technology turned out to be most revolutionary in emerging economies?

Take Africa for instance. Consumers in those countries became so frustrated with the banking fees imposed on their transactions every time the wanted to merely top up their mobile airtime, that airtime minutes alone actually became a form of money. Banking in the way it’s been developed for the developed world simply does not work when a transaction to top up a phone can cost more than the airtime itself.

South African-based startup Wala realised this early on. It had developed a smartphone app which acted like a wallet, facilitating customer transactions via the app with existing banking infrastructure. But the high banking fees for nearly every function was hurting Wala’s customer base and the company’s early business model as a mobile wallet for the smartphone generation.

They needed a Zero-fee solution, but the existing financial system just didn’t work. That’s when they realized they could switch to a cryptocurrency and allow payments across a peer-to-peer network for merchants, offering airtime, data, electricity bills – even the ability to pay school fees.

Today Wala, which raised $1.2 million selling ethereum-based “$DALA” tokens in an initial coin offering (ICO) in December last year, is facilitating thousands of transactions in daily accounts across Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa, with most of those are micropayments under $1.

Since the launch of their $DALA currency in May 2018 (currently accessible through the Wala mobile application) over 100,000 $DALA wallets have been opened and over 2.5 million $DALA transactions have been processed, says the company. The multi-chain crypto asset – at least right now – uses Ether for the wallet and Stellar for transactions, though it is not locked to any one platform.

Through $DALA protocols (Kopa, Soko and Kazi), consumers have access to borderless, low cost, efficient, and unique financial services enabling them to earn, save, borrow, and transact in a new, decentralized, financial system.

But Wala does not plan to stop there.

Today, Dala, announces it has partnered with a  gigawatt-scale solar program for Uganda to create a blockchain-enabled clean energy economy.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

Long-time energy company CleanPath Emerging Markets Uganda (CPEM) is partnering with the Ugandan Government and the Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development on the project which will mean Ugandans are able to buy solar energy using $DALA from this massive new infrastructure project.

CPEM will use the DALA blockchain platform to manage its ledger, its vendor contracts, and its partner commitments. The company has over 11,000 MWs of renewable energy experience already under its belt.

The $1.5 billion program aims to create a new clean energy economy in Uganda, not only creating employment and kick-starting a clean energy economy but new economic development in Uganda. Ugandan consumers will be able to buy solar power in $DALA, workers to be paid in $DALA and the program will even run on $DALA.  

Tricia Martinez, Wala cofounder and CEO, told me at the recent Pathfounder event in Oslo: “The numbers we’ve seen since the launch of $DALA have been staggering, and a large portion of our current users are Ugandan, so this partnership is a natural next step to allow users the opportunity to further benefit from using $DALA. The high level of user traffic also shows us that Ugandans are ready to use crypto assets in their day-to-day transactions.”

But the story wouldn’t have come about without an enlightened African Prince who could have stepped straight out of the mythical kingdom of Wakanda, as featured in the recent smash hit Black Panther movie.

For the founder of CPEM is Prince Kudra Kalema of the Bugandan Kingdom (a Ugandan royal family), whose ancestry goes back to at least the 14th Century. Buganda is now a kingdom monarchy with a large degree of autonomy from the Ugandan state.

“We’re truly excited about this program and our partnership with Dala”, says Prince Kudra Kalema of the Buganda Kingdom, who is also Managing Partner and Co-Founder at CP-EM. “By providing Ugandans with an opportunity to access clean energy through $DALA, we’re fostering a more inclusive decentralized financial system not possible with legacy technologies.”

In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, Prince Kalema told me: “My family considers itself to be the custodian of the land, and I have been searching for about a decade to find solutions that would improve the country. But what could we work on when people couldn’t even switch their lights on?”

It became obvious to him that the biggest issue was affordable electricity. And to do it in a renewable way, and it had to be solar. Microgrids turned out not to be the solution. And it had to be at scale.

But the question is, why did he hit on cryptocurrency?

“We began using the $DALA protocol because it became very clear that the financial structure in Uganda was not adequate. It was clear we needed something. There is no way the Uganda Shilling is stable enough for the type of programme we are doing. Wala was already invested in the same country and wasn’t just about the idea of a running a crypto coin in an emerging market, but was also about creating the best type of financial institutions for the country. That goes hand in hand with what we are doing. It became a no-brainer.”

He says the $DALA crypto combined with his solar project will be much easier to run in Uganda than in countries like the US: “Over 80% of Ugandans are under 35, and very well educated. I don’t like the term leap-frogging, but this is what this is. They don’t have to unlearn anything that was there before. They are eager to figure out and learn about a solution that will help them. When you look at how quickly mobile money was adopted by Ugandans — it became powerful not because it was imposed but because people yearned for it. Ugandans are saying that what we have right now does not work. The banking transaction fees, the cost of remittances… — it’s difficult for them to be enthusiastic about something they know doesn’t work already.”

Uganda continues to be a market hungry to adopt new technology, and the recent announcement that Binance is launching a fiat to crypto exchange in the country is a recent example of this.

He added: “Uganda has always been at the forefront of these types of things. Even before we were a protectorate of the British Empire, Uganda was part of the region where people would travel to find out how to deal with things in Africa. We had an intricate tribal system. The British didn’t invade, they made it a protectorate because of this.”

The details of the plan are ambitious. Prince Kalema’s CPEM plans to create a gigawatt-scale solar power development program in Uganda providing clean energy to 25% of the population and creating 200,000 new jobs in the clean energy economy. 

The program would more than double the current electricity generation capacity in Uganda (equivalent of about 2 average US coal power plants) where 75% of the UG population has no access to energy.

By using $DALA Ugandans will be able to consume energy at zero transaction fees, use it for everyday purchases, and also convert it back to fiat Ugandan currency via agents/merchants and cryptocurrency exchanges.

It will even allow CPEM and the government of Uganda to make grants of free power available to the poorest, while keeping a completely auditable and tamper-proof record of these grants. 

The story of how a small startup came to take African markets by storm begins in 2014.

Initially backed by angel investor and a social-impact VC (Impact Engine) in the US, Tricia Martinez’s Wala (pictured above) joined the Barclays Techstars Accelerator in London in 2016. It later set up shop in Cape Town, South Africa and started growing its team (it’s now at a total of 12 staff).

Not long after, South African VC Newtown Partners invested and Wala then issued the $DALA crypto-asset and set up the Dala foundation. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Newtown is headed-up by Vinny Linghams (of the well-known Civic and ethereum-based, project).

Martinez is passionate that cryptocurrency is going to be the solution emerging markets like Africa have wanted and needed for years: “The fact that the unit of account and store of value for this program is $DALA proves its utility and shows its potential to become a preferred financial system across emerging markets. We’re excited to be involved from the ground-level and look forward to playing our part in creating a just and accessible financial system for consumers.”

She says both the Prince and the Ugandan government “needed a partner that can help drive the financial inclusion to get them into a more efficient digital system. That’s when they heard about us. When we started talking we both saw the opportunity to actually build an entire ecosystem built on a crypto asset.”

“So it’s not just that consumers are buying that energy cryptocurrency, but the workers who are building our energy grids will get paid in it. So they’ve become very passionate about blockchain especially from the energy perspective, to create transparency. Working with the government to create more accountable records of what they’re building out could even reduce the potential for corruption.”

As Martinez points out: “In the hands of over 100,000 users in Uganda, already people are purchasing their electricity needs, products and services. The goal with this project is for people who are getting the energy to be able to then tap into all these other services that we offer. We’re also going to be launching cashing agents so that people can go to those mobile money agents around the corner to cash in and cash out to their wallet.”

It’s clearly a big project. Some observers will see the words ‘Uganda and Cryptocurrency’ in the same sentence and no doubt come out with some kind of trite, dismissive, assessment.

But Wala’s experience on the ground — and it cannot be emphasized enough how important that is, compared to the armchair commentators at most blockchain conferences in the Western world — combined with the hunger of an emerging nation, a passionate Prince and the ingenuity of its people should not be underestimated.

Cloudian, a company that specializes in helping businesses store petabytes of data, today announced that it has raised a $94 million Series E funding round. Investors in this round, which is one of the largest we have seen for a storage vendor, include Digital Alpha, Fidelity Eight Roads, Goldman Sachs, INCJ, JPIC (Japan Post Investment Corporation), NTT DOCOMO Ventures and WS Investments. This round includes a $25 million investment from Digital Alpha, which was first announced earlier this year.

With this, the seven-year-old company has now raised a total of $174 million.

As the company told me, it now has about 160 employees and 240 enterprise customers. Cloudian has found its sweet spot in managing the large video archives of entertainment companies, but its customers also include healthcare companies, automobile manufacturers and Formula One teams.

What’s important to stress here is that Cloudian’s focus is on on-premise storage, not cloud storage, though it does offer support for multi-cloud data management, as well. “Data tends to be most effectively used close to where it is created and close to where it’s being used,” Cloudian VP of worldwide sales Jon Ash told me. “That’s because of latency, because of network traffic. You can almost always get better performance, better control over your data if it is being stored close to where it’s being used.” He also noted that it’s often costly and complex to move that data elsewhere, especially when you’re talking about the large amounts of information that Cloudian’s customers need to manage.

Unsurprisingly, companies that have this much data now want to use it for machine learning, too, so Cloudian is starting to get into this space, as well. As Cloudian CEO and co-founder Michael Tso also told me, companies are now aware that the data they pull in, no matter whether that’s from IoT sensors, cameras or medical imaging devices, will only become more valuable over time as they try to train their models. If they decide to throw the data away, they run the risk of having nothing with which to train their models.

Cloudian plans to use the new funding to expand its global sales and marketing efforts and increase its engineering team. “We have to invest in engineering and our core technology, as well,” Tso noted. “We have to innovate in new areas like AI.”

As Ash also stressed, Cloudian’s business is really data management — not just storage. “Data is coming from everywhere and it’s going everywhere,” he said. “The old-school storage platforms that were siloed just don’t work anywhere.”

Another day, another blockchain. This time Knotel – a coworking space rental service in Manhattan – has acquired 42Floors, a commercial real estate search engine in order to, according to founder Amol Sarva, get “access to data and technology on over 10 billion square feet of office space, driving further liquidity to Knotel’s marketplace while also accelerating its plans for a blockchain platform.”

Knotel is building the Agile HQ platform, a way to rent office space for a few hours or a few months without getting stuck in a least. The company has 1 million square feet of space in New York, San Francisco, London, and Berlin and it raised $100 million in funding. The company has more has more buildings in NY than WeWork.

“42Floors built a powerful tool to organize a dark market that hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” said Amol Sarva, CEO of Knotel. “It’s still backroom and bilateral while the rest of the world is becoming digital and standardized. This is what leads to transactions that take months to close with a dozen middlemen – no reliable information. You can buy a house faster than you can rent a floor. Partnering together will help give owners and customers what they both want: truth.”

Knotel recently launched an ICO in April. Their Knotel Koin aims to speed up real estate transactions by allowing instant settlement and allow for charge-backs and shorter rental periods. The 42Floors purchase enables the company to bring new properties onto its platform and could let non-blockchain-based contracts move to the blockchain.

Most of us don’t normally associate Business Intelligence (BI) with small- or medium-sized businesses; the large investment that has traditionally been required to hire specialist data-delving experts makes us think it’s the preserve of larger organizations. But no longer is that the case – not only does a growing selection of self-service tools put BI within reach of smaller companies, but you probably create and hold more data than you realize, which makes it easier to get going. Dispel these false beliefs about BI and get started harnessing the data that will make it easier for your small business to make more strategic decisions.

You’ve already got the data you need

It’s easy to underestimate the amount of data your small- or medium-sized business already has at its disposal. In every area of your business from finance and sales to customer relations and website management, the software packages you use to simplify your everyday operations are packed with reams of information that most of us don’t even think twice about. By talking to key stakeholders in your organization’s various departments, you can get an idea for the kind of data you already have, how it’s generated, and where it’s stored. You’re then in a good place to begin thinking about using BI tools to transform that information into meaningful business insights that inform key decision-making – all while reducing the resources you need to invest in time-consuming data generation from scratch.

Self-service BI tools are plentiful – and affordable

The real beauty of the emergence of self-service BI is that it puts useful business analytics within reach of smaller business owners who lack the fancy-pants budgets of larger corporations. In fact, there are numerous self-service BI tools that you can use to get started in this area without even spending a dime. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful application that’s pleasingly user-friendly, and most businesses will find the functions they need in the free version. Zoho Reports has a low entry-level cost, too, and the slightly pricier yet still affordable Tableau is another option that’s worth exploring.

It’s easy to get started

BI is an intimidating term, and just the thought of delving into it can send a shiver down the spine of the average business owner. But by taking small steps, it’s easy to get started – and before you know it you’ll have the benefit of real-intelligence-based business insights that enable you to make better decisions for your organization’s long-term success. Most self-service BI tools come with built-in suggestions for reports that businesses commonly run and find useful. Other worthwhile statistics to explore include the percentage of your clients who cancel within a set period; website landing pages that generate the longest visits; your most profitable individual products or services; the days or months in which you generate your highest revenues; and which of your clients brings in the most revenue and profit.

Truly harnessing data is the future of the business world – it’s how companies like yours can make smarter decisions that increase efficiency and profitability. And self-service tools mean smaller organizations no longer need a crazy budget to be able to afford the benefits of BI in the first place. To find out more about putting in place the tools that can help make your business more intelligent, just give us a call.

If you’ve managed to convince yourself that only large enterprises have the money to take advantage of Business Intelligence (BI), it’s time to think again. While it’s true that in the past you needed the help of pricey specialists to really delve into BI, these days a range of self-service tools mean that small- and medium-sized businesses can do much more by themselves. You probably create and hold much more data than you realize, too – all of which means now’s the time to make a start. Here’s the truth about some false beliefs you probably have about BI and your small business.

You’ve already got the data you need

It’s easy to underestimate the amount of data your small- or medium-sized business already has at its disposal. In every area of your business from finance and sales to customer relations and website management, the software packages you use to simplify your everyday operations are packed with reams of information that most of us don’t even think twice about. By talking to key stakeholders in your organization’s various departments, you can get an idea for the kind of data you already have, how it’s generated, and where it’s stored. You’re then in a good place to begin thinking about using BI tools to transform that information into meaningful business insights that inform key decision-making – all while reducing the resources you need to invest in time-consuming data generation from scratch.

Self-service BI tools are plentiful – and affordable

The real beauty of the emergence of self-service BI is that it puts useful business analytics within reach of smaller business owners who lack the fancy-pants budgets of larger corporations. In fact, there are numerous self-service BI tools that you can use to get started in this area without even spending a dime. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful application that’s pleasingly user-friendly, and most businesses will find the functions they need in the free version. Zoho Reports has a low entry-level cost, too, and the slightly pricier yet still affordable Tableau is another option that’s worth exploring.

It’s easy to get started

BI is an intimidating term, and just the thought of delving into it can send a shiver down the spine of the average business owner. But by taking small steps, it’s easy to get started – and before you know it you’ll have the benefit of real-intelligence-based business insights that enable you to make better decisions for your organization’s long-term success. Most self-service BI tools come with built-in suggestions for reports that businesses commonly run and find useful. Other worthwhile statistics to explore include the percentage of your clients who cancel within a set period; website landing pages that generate the longest visits; your most profitable individual products or services; the days or months in which you generate your highest revenues; and which of your clients brings in the most revenue and profit.

Truly harnessing data is the future of the business world – it’s how companies like yours can make smarter decisions that increase efficiency and profitability. And self-service tools mean smaller organizations no longer need a crazy budget to be able to afford the benefits of BI in the first place. To find out more about putting in place the tools that can help make your business more intelligent, just give us a call.

Business Intelligence (BI) has conventionally been the preserve of big business, given the need for specialist knowledge meant hiring pricey experts was often the only way to leverage its value. But the rise of self-service BI tools has leveled the playing field, allowing small- and medium-sized businesses to get in on the game too. And with small businesses now producing far greater volumes of data than in the past, there’s never been a better time to put BI to use in your organization. Make your first steps towards smarter business planning by dispelling some popular beliefs about BI – here’s what you need to know.

You’ve already got the data you need

It’s easy to underestimate the amount of data your small- or medium-sized business already has at its disposal. In every area of your business from finance and sales to customer relations and website management, the software packages you use to simplify your everyday operations are packed with reams of information that most of us don’t even think twice about. By talking to key stakeholders in your organization’s various departments, you can get an idea for the kind of data you already have, how it’s generated, and where it’s stored. You’re then in a good place to begin thinking about using BI tools to transform that information into meaningful business insights that inform key decision-making – all while reducing the resources you need to invest in time-consuming data generation from scratch.

Self-service BI tools are plentiful – and affordable

The real beauty of the emergence of self-service BI is that it puts useful business analytics within reach of smaller business owners who lack the fancy-pants budgets of larger corporations. In fact, there are numerous self-service BI tools that you can use to get started in this area without even spending a dime. Microsoft Power BI is a powerful application that’s pleasingly user-friendly, and most businesses will find the functions they need in the free version. Zoho Reports has a low entry-level cost, too, and the slightly pricier yet still affordable Tableau is another option that’s worth exploring.

It’s easy to get started

BI is an intimidating term, and just the thought of delving into it can send a shiver down the spine of the average business owner. But by taking small steps, it’s easy to get started – and before you know it you’ll have the benefit of real-intelligence-based business insights that enable you to make better decisions for your organization’s long-term success. Most self-service BI tools come with built-in suggestions for reports that businesses commonly run and find useful. Other worthwhile statistics to explore include the percentage of your clients who cancel within a set period; website landing pages that generate the longest visits; your most profitable individual products or services; the days or months in which you generate your highest revenues; and which of your clients brings in the most revenue and profit.

Truly harnessing data is the future of the business world – it’s how companies like yours can make smarter decisions that increase efficiency and profitability. And self-service tools mean smaller organizations no longer need a crazy budget to be able to afford the benefits of BI in the first place. To find out more about putting in place the tools that can help make your business more intelligent, just give us a call.

We may expect to find computers everywhere these days, from our offices, schools and airports to our pockets and wrists, but until now there’s not been much call for computers in our hospital operating rooms. But new technology is making waves in healthcare circles and could even save lives by helping surgeons and physicians make life and death decisions. This is why investors and governments are looking into this area as way of improving healthcare and patient outcomes. So let’s take a look at some of this miraculous medical teach.

Enhanced diagnosis and treatment

IBM supercomputer, Dr. Watson, was specifically developed to help doctors make more accurate diagnoses while also recommending treatments and procedures. In the future, it is hoped that physicians will be able to rely on Watson to keep track of patient history, keep up-to-date with the latest medical research and analyze potential treatment options.

How Watson does this is by analyzing unstructured data, which includes news articles, research reports and even social media posts. Once asked a question, it evaluates all possible meanings to determine what its being asked. Lastly it’ll find supporting evidence and compare quality of information before presenting the best answers and solutions which the doctors can then decide to act on or not.

Breaking the language barrier

Omnifluent Health is a translation program developed by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) that helps patients communicate with doctors and others in the medical field. For example, a doctor could speak into the app – ask if the patient has any allergies – and the Omnifluent translates the doctor’s words into another language.

In the US alone there are 47 million residents that can’t speak English fluently. The Omnifluent reduces the need for translators and helps quicken relay of important information, which allows more time for accurate diagnoses and treatment.

Social networking for doctors

In 2011, U.S. News, The American Society for Clinical Investigation along with other distinguished partners in the field have joined forces to create a physician-only social network dubbed Doximity. Its premise it that it can link doctors, allowing them to work together and share expertize so as to take greater care of their patients. Currently, the roster boasts over 700,000 searchable physicians available for case collaboration via instant messaging.

One call away

To save patients from a potential trip to the ER, Sherpaa is a New York-based telehealth provider offering medical consultations online and over the phone. Patients can use Sherpaa to contact the city’s top medical specialists, capable of not only treating sore throats and hay fever but also help treat an array of acute and chronic illnesses. This development could possibly signal the beginning of healthcare (literally) being at your fingertips.

Health on-the-go

To keep up with the 21st century’s fast-moving pace, a growing number of mobile apps and gadgets have been developed to help people stay active, sleep better and eat healthy. Examples include the Fitbit pedometer that tracks sleep and daily activity, and utilizes social networking to motivate users.

Lark is a silent alarm clock and is in charge of monitoring and analyzing your sleep activity. It goes a step further by offering suggestions on how to boost the snooze. If you are diet-conscious, numerous calorie-counting, food-monitoring and menu-tracking apps are also at your disposal.

These are just five of current healthcare IT developments and many of more to come. Want to find out more on how technology is improving healthcare? Looking for some more apps? Give us a call us today, we’re sure we can help.