Speed Saves/Speed Kills: Accelerating Analytical Capabilities Without Putting Your Organization into the Wall

You can't take the car you drive to the grocery store to a Formula 1 race and expect to win - or even start. Formula 1 cars work on the same basic principles as your grocery-getter but on a whole different level. There's a team of skilled professionals focusing on safety, communicating, and acting in concert to achieve and maintain the speed needed to win races and earn reputations.

Similarly, there's a difference between what you've traditionally done for reporting and analytics and what you're being asked to do. Some of your foundations and principles need to be leveraged or reinforced, but you need to think about adding new capabilities as well. If you're investing in more data, advanced analytics and self-service capabilities, you don't want to put a 900 horsepower engine in a beat-up Yugo with stock suspension, transmission, worn tires, and brakes.

We'll discuss the following:

The Driver Safety Course - examples of where speed kills
The Vehicle - making sure you have the right vehicle for the race you're in
The Setup - the principles, processes, and tools to set you up for victory
The Supporting Team - who you need on your team and how to organize them
The Race - how to finish fast again and again

For over 25 years Grant Sutton has helped organizations, large and small, optimize the value of their data using his expertise in information strategy, data warehousing/business intelligence, data governance, data architecture, and enterprise performance management. He is passionate about identifying and solving the whole problem - people, process, and technology - to deliver value from data.

Grant currently serves as the Director of Solutions Architecture and Data Governance for Datasource Consulting. In addition to experience consulting across three continents, he has served as VP of Enterprise Performance Management and Data Governance at Apollo Education Group/University of Phoenix and is the Acting Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence at AmerisourceBergen Corporation.

Matt Caton is the BI & Analytics Practice Lead at Datasource Consulting. Matt joined Datasource in 2008 as a Senior BI Architect, specializing in implementing, customizing and optimizing front-end enterprise reporting solutions. During that time, Matt has continually delivered exemplary work for Fortune 500 organizations, spanning several industries including Healthcare, Military, and Pharmaceuticals.

Matt is a certified Informatica MDM Specialist and a certified Cognos Multi-Dimensional Report Developer. He is knowledgeable in numerous enterprise reporting tools including IBM Cognos, Tableau, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), SAP Business Objects, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), MicroStrategy, Pentaho, and Jaspersoft.