The Apple of BI: Tableau Makes the Complex Seem Simple This year I had the privilege of attending the Tableau Customer Conference with 1400 other raving fans. Tableau is one of those companies doing it right and they’re being paid back with a growing base of loyal customers. This is up from about 300 just a few years ago. What Tableau does so well is that they make something so complex seem so simple yet so elegant—a description often bestowed upon Apple. BI marketers use a lot of the same buzzwords to describe their products, including self service, rich applications, and agile. MORE >>

Customers’ needs change. vision statement should give all your stakeholders (employees, investors, customers) a good mental image of your desired future state. For example, Amazon’s vision statement is: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.&# Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.&#. The business climate is in perpetual motion. MORE >>

For example, a hotel chain did a customer survey and found they have good results. Last week I had to opportunity to attend the TDWI conference on BI in Las Vegas. While TDWI actually holds four conferences every year, this first one of the year is always the largest. This year, things seemed to be hopping with over 750 attendees. During the conference, I spent some time in the TDWI Executive Summit. The summit is meant to give executives who have some responsibility for BI a high-level overview of various topics of concern and interest. Cloud BI – It’s very early in the cloud BI space. MORE >>

B2B Finally Embraces Social Media It seems like for so long, B2B companies struggled with the social media concept–how to get the attention of their customers through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social avenues. But just give it time and most have found their social “voice.” ” This infographic from Insideview speaks to the great benefits B2B companies have received as they’ve embraced social media tactics. Selling Through Social Media to Close More Leads. Marketing Sales Social Media B2B MORE >>

As a marketer, I’m concerned about “link overload” causing my prospects and customers to tune out. I recently read an article on Fortune magazine titled, Oversharing: The Business of Share Buttons. The article captured something I’d been thinking about for quite a while: with so many means to share content, is content sharing becoming diluted? There are two major players in the “share button” space – AddThis and ShareThis. AddThis offers 271 sharing services to its publishers and ShareThis offers 50 sharing services. 271 services? recognize maybe a dozen. What is Kaboodle anyway? MORE >>