Recent Posts by Barry Mostert

Being agile is more important than ever. Most organizations are now undergoing a digital transformation, more or less successfully, and being agile is one of the best ways to manage disruption. It helps business teams continually adapt to changing scope and deliverables, as they manage to change priorities in what is a highly volatile, constantly changing environment. Being agile works alongside disruption, continually adapting to market or external changes rather than being...

With the advent of new technologies like the Oracle Autonomous Database, access to data management capabilities has been put into the hands of ordinary business users. The need for DBAs with specific skills to deploy and maintain databases is gone. Users without SQL skills can spin up new databases in minutes. But here is the question. If business users are now able to spin up data marts whenever they choose, what is the actual business impact of this new freedom? Are we not...

The latest updates to Oracle Analytics Cloud provides new functionality in two primary categories that will help you meet the breadth of all your business analytics needs. We released the 105.4 update with Augmented Self-Service (so everyone in your organization can get the right data at the right time) and deeper Integration with all the common big data sources with built-in security and governance (so you can easily share insights and collaborate with your colleagues).  The...

Changing brand names isn't an uncommon occurrence. Datsun became Nissan, Microsoft Office became Office 365, and Jennifer Lopez became simply J Lo. Similarly, Oracle felt it was time for Oracle Business Intelligence, with its more than a dozen product names, to simplify into one brand—Oracle Analytics—and just three products: Oracle Analytics Cloud Oracle Analytics Server Oracle Analytics for Applications After numerous acquisitions (e.g., Hyperion/Brio, Siebel, DataScience.com,...

Let's face it—mobile devices are an indispensable part of our daily lives. These amazing devices keep us in touch with our friends and family, entertain us, and let us know exactly where we are and where we should be going. They enable our transport, be that by car, train, plane, or electric scooter. They monitor our daily activities and help us stay healthy. And they gently remind us when we stray too far from our target path. If we entrust them with the things that are most...

The latest version of Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud includes a refreshed data visualization a capability that empowers business users to explore, discover and visualize their data.  This marks its fourth year since becoming generally available with Oracle's initial cloud analytics offerings (Business Intelligence Cloud Service and Data Visualization Cloud Service).  Oracle Analytics Cloud's data visualization feature addressed that primary shift to user self-service with...

Data preparation—also known as data enrichment—isn't new. In fact, I can almost guarantee that every analytics deployment out there has their users doing some kind of data preparation to support their visualizations.  They might be using a specialized tool, like Alteryx, or a bespoke home-grown process that leverages several tools, Microsoft Excel, coding, and sometimes even Microsoft Access. However, the fundamental problem stems from the fact that source data systems don't...

Individually, a ceramic tile can have a unique color and shape. But when matched with other tiles in a specific pattern, an artist creates a beautiful mosaic that is pleasing to the eye and whose symbolism is understood by all of those around. The same can be said of financial business data. Part 1 of this blog series covered how FP&A (Financial Planning and Analysis) can work Smarter leveraging machine learning techniques and Part 2 described how a modern autonomous...

In Part 1 of this blog series, I described how FP&A could work smarter by leveraging modern analytics.  In this piece I'll describe how FP&A can work faster with the same human resources and skills already in place, and still reduce costs.  Tomorrow's analytics for finance is here today. We call it, Extreme Finance.  Finance Working Faster Why work faster?  Because fast is cool. Just ask the people behind the Bloodhound Project (pictured above), which is working with Oracle...