This is my first posting on this site. Seems like a very energetic place to discuss BO topics.
I am trying my luck here as well
I have a strong Java, oracle, sql background. Since last 3 years i have been playing a role of technical lead and business analyst. I am great at working with business users as well.
Basically, I have a good technical background and good business user interaction skills. I am looking to develop some skill to market myself in this market (currently unemployed).
I am just wondering how hard is it to get in to BO market. I have a good experience designing reports (collecting reporting requirements from users) as well.
with my above brief history, can you guys share your quick thoughts if I should even think about BO market or not? ( I know it is a very open ended question but I just want to find your expert opinion and then go for further investigation)
If you think, i should give it a try, I would appreciate if you can guide me to the next steps about which modules i should more focus on and so on…
If you have never done anything with the BusinessObjects tool in the past, first thing first, you need to get some working experience on the tool set.
Yes, I understand it is the catch-22…you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. But unfortunately, that is how it goes. employers will not hire anyone without actual working experience, especially in this economic hard time where every job has a hundred of applicants.
You might want to look for small companies that cannot afford the high salary demanded by the skilled BusinessObjects developers. Some small companies might be willing to train you as entry level employee (low salary). But those are very hard to find and you will face very stiff competition from other job seekers.
More promising is the dashboard market (Tableau software, Spotfire, Xcelsius, etc.), data modeling (always a good one), or data mining/predicitve analysis (on the rise for years) IMHO compared to typical BusinessObjects stuff (reports & universes).
[i]Project Management /i is also a classic, there not that many good PMs arounds.
Maybe, you can try a lateral move from your current position.
Attending official training & acieving certifications are a good way to get started as well.
Free software trials can be downloaded for SAP BusinessObjects.
Guys thank you for your interest and time in replying
Nick,
Regarding your suggestion about thinking about joining general BI market; I was under the impression that BO is leading the BI market (top 5 based on gartner review of 2008). But I don’t have any experience in BW/BI space so I am not sure if that field is too big to explore in this market and in my situation where getting a job is first priority.
Regarding your suggestion to explore SQL server, I did have some experience, backup-recovery and writing t-sql queries but not much of a admin kind of experience. And that is one of the thought process i have to learn more about SQL server.
Data mining and dash board is being some what buzz word, I have heard in consulting industry. Some say that this industry hasn’t grown to its potential. But i am not sure if guy at my level can learn this skill easily or is this field too difficult to enter. I would appreciate if you can share some light on it (I am strong technical person who happend to move to business side and got busted badly. being at wrong place at wrong time).
Dashboarding has been a hot topic for the past 2, 3 years, and it will continue to be so. In my humble opinion, I think dashboarding is a little over hyped. The vendors are trying to sell you additional tool to do things that your existing tools can do already. For example, you can use Crystal Report to build a dashboard which is as good as those built by a dedicated dashboarding tool like Xcelsius. But from the developer standpoint, you get more skillset under your belt and therefore, more job security. So nobody is complaining.
Dashboarding, just like any other BI skill, is not easy to get in. But once you have it, it is a marketable skillset.
Agreed, what makes a dashboard :)?
My answer any high level report, whatever way it is presented.
This is, almost, always a “discussion” I have with clients.
Xcelcuis is a visulisation tool, slick looking and clever, but not an enterprise PM tool.
As we all know, what basically drives it is just an Excel sheet, plus limitations in the performance of the swf files, best for highly aggregated data only.
Although it coiuld be argued that if you are looking to exceed these limits, its not a true dashboard anyway…
Personally, I like Microsofts Proclarity tool from what I have seen of it…
I heartily disagree:
A dashboard presents all the KPIs to achieve a certain objective, at a glance. Visualization Information is more than just creating a high-level report. And most “wanna-be” dashboards one comes across as examples on websites, such as Xcelsius demos at the SAP website are just a poor examples for any real dashboard. The competitors such as Oracle etc. are not better by the way when it comes to their website demos of dashboards.
Dashboarding is about putting the “right” KPIs together, enriching them with context (such as timelines, targets, Top 10/Bottom 10 products, etc.) and choosing the best visualization to convey that information quickly, allowing easy analysis across for example regions, product lines, other competitors, etc., as a bad example you will often see a drop-down list in a wanna-be" dashboard to select one region at time, thereby segmenting the data and not allowing to compare the KPIs for multiple regions at once.
Fair comment Andreas, I was, slightly, playing devils advocate .
Well I Know that is what you are currently worlking on, due to your previous BOB “location”…;). What tools are you currently using?
My point is that few people can decide what a dashboard actually is, although you have made a good definition and I know you are a fan of Steven Few.
I have had many people tell me that they want a dashboard, but can’t tell me what their key KPIS are / or provide a consistant business definition…
I would also argue that people will suggest they want a dashboard, when all they require is a high level report.
True dashboards are for high level, executive, consumption IMO.
Good comment about the regions, I think we can both agree that a, true, dashboard should show the key high level KPIS across the whole of a business?
Cannot agree more! That is EXACTLY what many dashboards look like…including the one that is being developed at our company. All they are doing is to take all the existing KPIs from the Key Indicators report, put them on Xcelsius, and pretend they are providing new insight to management because they are now graphical.
That is SOOOOO true! Very often, management are sold on the demo and the hype, but they don’t really know what they want. In our company, the Xcelsius dashboards are not being used like what they are supposed to be. Perhaps neither the requesters nor the developers really know/understand what is a dashboard. Or perhaps the management just want a fancy screensaver with charts and graphs. 8)
(BOB member since 2002-08-15)
(BOB member since 2004-01-16)
(BOB member since 2002-06-20)
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