Qlik offers visual analytics in the cloud for business

Qlik, a visual analytics provider, has announced Qlik Sense Cloud Business. Qlik Sense Cloud Business enables users to create, manage, and collaborate with visual analytics in the cloud. The subscription-based cloud offering extends the power of data-driven insights to users and groups throughout an organisation.

Qlik Sense Cloud Business has an intuitive design that enables users of all technical skill levels to quickly and easily create, manage, and collaborate with meaningful analytic apps. Responsive design capabilities offer analysis on-the-go from any device – regardless of device size – including touch, drill, and interact features, with no additional development necessary. In addition, data management capabilities empower users to combine data from diverse sources, including in the cloud, uploaded from on-premise, and third-party apps, to quickly create rich, interactive apps. This user experience is underpinned by Qlik’s Associative Model, which enables users to probe all the possible associations that exist across all of their data.

Deliver value faster

The existing Qlik Sense Cloud Basic and Plus offerings provide individuals with all the advantages of Qlik Sense combined with the ability to easily share analysis and insights. Qlik Sense Cloud Business adds additional security and governance features, with a focus on empowerment. The cloud-based model allows organisations to add new users and apps as requirements change, with the elasticity to support current and future needs. 

Qlik Sense Cloud Business includes: 

A group work area allowing users to collaboratively create, edit, and access group content and apps, enhancing collaboration without limiting flexibility.
Group data space enabling all users to contribute data that contains reusable and consistent definitions, expediting the process of creating new apps and eliminating the guesswork in maintaining apps as business requirements evolve over time.
Group shared networks that offers multiple shared networks or streams that users may be invited to follow, enabling control for which users have access to which apps.

“Our cloud strategy encompasses more than just an infrastructure or software-as-a-service play,” said Anthony Deighton, Qlik CTO and SVP of Products. “At Qlik we see an exciting opportunity for cloud-based value-added services to optimise the visual analytics experience. Likewise, because people do not make decisions alone, sharing in the cloud will always be an important part of our collaboration strategy.”

The company has also previewed Qlik Sense Enterprise 3.0, the newest release of its business intelligence (BI) and analytics solution that will be available in June 2016. Qlik Sense Enterprise 3.0 combines enterprise readiness and governance with visualisation and data preparation capabilities, allowing organisations to meet a broad range of BI use cases from a single platform. 

With this latest release, Qlik has improved its management and administration capabilities to support IT with more effective auditing, configuration, and governance for broad multi-geography deployments. New user interface enhancements in the Qlik Management Console (QMC) provide configuration options for content and resources. In addition, Qlik Sense Enterprise is now available in Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Turkish.

Developers are empowered with a new development hub. This includes new developer APIs and capabilities, including an app integration API, a visualisation API for programmatic creation of analytics, and a new integrated developer environment (IDE) plugin for Visual Studio.

“Qlik built the category for user-driven, self-service BI. With Qlik Sense, we continue to expand the market by creating a scalable, secure, and extensible platform that organisations can consider the centrepiece of their enterprise-wide BI deployment,” said Deighton.

"Our platform approach allows us to address such a breadth of use cases with more depth than other offerings. The openness of our platform expands opportunities for custom analytics apps, embedded BI, and developer innovation. With our industry-leading global partner network at the ready to bring these solutions to market and our rapidly growing community of developers, we’ve hit an exciting point in the next phase of industry leadership, extending beyond visual analytics.”

More intuitive app creation, visual analysis, and collaboration

Users will benefit from new visual search capabilities that allow them to search across charts and data. In addition, visual exploration capabilities now allow users to explore and discover insights in analyses using governed metrics and dimensions. Additional functionality improves business user app creation, including time aware charts, automatic detection of geographic data, and improved application of data-driven colour palettes.

Several new features facilitate sharing and collaboration, including storytelling that allows data stories to be directly published to Microsoft Office and PDF. In addition, Qlik Nprinting, which previously supported only QlikView, now supports Qlik Sense. This enables organisations with legacy reporting environments to move aggressively to a modern BI architecture while maintaining their requirement for statutory or compliance reporting and extending more interactive analysis to business leaders. 

Interested?

Qlik Sense Cloud Business will be available in the second half of 2016.

Plantronics turns headsets into data aggregation tools

Plantronics has announced Plantronics Manager Pro v3.8 and the new Asset Analysis suite. Plantronics Manager Pro is a software subscription service that customers and partners can use to manage audio communications devices, enabling them to gain insights into their business communications processes, how to streamline them, and generate more positive outcomes such as increased first call resolution.

The Plantronics Manager Pro Asset Analysis suite allows users to:

• Track device deployment and configurations, reconfigurations, and firmware updates
• Find non-standard firmware, software, softphone, and communications client deployments
• Use user personas to define standard device settings that ensure an optimal user experience and comply with workplace security, health, and safety policies.

When analytics are built directly into business processes, it helps reduce human and financial resource expenditure. Plantronics Manager Pro with Asset Analysis enables the IT manager to quickly run an inventory report to see who has particular headsets, their operational status, and to which softphones they are connected. 

One of the greatest values is seen by customers deploying new unified communications. Customers can identify user personas throughout their organisation and match the right headset to their communication styles. With Plantronics Manager Pro, they can subsequently establish the right mix of system-defined and user-defined settings and push them out to the headsets, so that on first use, everybody’s experience is customised to their requirements. This service can help speed user adoption through reports showing if and how the headsets are being used, and can ensure valid configurations. It also lets IT know things like who may benefit from additional training or configuration changes.

Plantronics Manager Pro with Asset Analysis allows contact centre managers to equip customer service representatives (CSRs) with the right tools to provide the best customer experiences. The service allows the contact centre manager to create standard configurations for the CSR workspace that foster the best customer and CSR experience, and lock them in place.

Interested?

Plantronics Manager Pro and Asset Analysis suite are available under an annual subscription from Plantronics Approved Resellers in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore for the Asia Pacific region. The offer will be expanded globally in the coming months.

Watch the associated video

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about Plantronics personas

Singapore is one of Asia's most competitive talent markets

Source: Randstad Sourceright website. Global figures.

Randstad Sourceright, a global talent player, today announced availability of its 2016 Talent Trends Report, a guide to 30 of the most important trends impacting the world of talent, employees and business this year.

The Randstad Sourceright 2016 Talent Trends Report was developed with the feedback and outlooks of nearly 400 HR, talent and business leaders spanning more than 60 countries. Randstad Sourceright uncovered that the single most challenging talent management issue of today is the lack of critical talent and the resulting impact on business, as well as a company’s leadership and succession pipeline. Other repercussions of talent scarcity include increased spending on talent acquisition, growing frustration among hiring managers and disappointed leaders who want to know why business plans aren’t moving forward.

“The Asia Pacific market faces a very uncertain 2016 with many challenges and opportunities ahead. For talent leaders, they also face a highly fluid world of work as talent scarcity grows across the region. To make sure their organisations remain agile during turbulent times, they need insight, the right strategies in place and a clear action plan,” said Doug Edmonds, Managing Director, Randstad Sourceright Asia Pacific. “Our 2016 Talent Trends Report takes an in-depth look at how leaders are responding to these developments and how best to prepare for these changes.”

Source: Randstad Sourceright website. Global figures.

Singapore especially remains one of Asia’s most competitive talent markets. The survey discovered some revealing insights shared by Singapore-based HR leaders:

Four in 10 (41%) said they need leaders the most (enterprising, multi-skilled professionals who can lead organisational change, development, and innovation) in the next five years

Nearly seven in 10 (68%) said talent scarcity negatively impacted their business in 2015

Eight in 10 (78%) plan to improve the skills of their hiring managers to provide a better candidate experience

The following areas that needs more investment to support their business goals, say Singapore HR leaders:

• More market intelligence (61%) 
• Investment in business and HR analytics (59%) 
• Investment in specialised recruiting and sourcing operations for specific skill-sets (54%) 

The survey results presented in the report also provide a holistic view of how organisations around the world deploy talent, the challenges they face and the solutions that help them to keep moving forward. Key findings include:

85% of respondents believe an integrated talent management approach encompassing permanent and contingent talent will enhance the resources available for business growth.

Source: Randstad Sourceright website. Global figures.

The use of talent and workforce analytics continues to increase, with 73% in Singapore using this data to create more efficient workforce planning.

When asked about the biggest trends impacting the future of work in the next five to 10 years, the top responses were the need to create greater flexible working options to attract mobile talent, the ability to analyse internal and external employee data to source and retain talent and the challenge of keeping pace with evolving technology. 

Interested?

Download a complimentary copy of Randstad Sourceright 2016 Talent Trends Report. Infographics are available on the same page. 

Big gap in health and fitness mobile app market

A report from the Media and Services UX group at Strategy Analytics surveying avid health and fitness consumers using health and/or fitness mobile applications has found that implementing multiple improvements will lead to more useful, usable, and compelling solutions.

Surveying consumers in the US and UK who used at least one health and/or fitness mobile application multiple times per week, Strategy Analytics found that many of these apps catered only had a single focus, such as health (food entry and logging for example), or fitness (tracking a run/walk as an instance). Consumers who were interested in tracking both were forced to seek multiple apps to complement one another, each requiring separate data entry, when what they want is an all-in-one app for health and fitness.

Christopher Dodge, Associate Director, MSX and report author, commented, “As many health and fitness apps currently exist for free, smarter health/fitness app offerings could serve as strong differentiators amongst competing apps and provide an opportunity for a paid health/fitness app – significantly, consumers in this study were willing to pay for this experience.”

Kevin Nolan, VP, UXIP, added, “These apps need to be intelligent enough to learn user behaviour, remind users to interact with the app after a certain amount of time has elapsed, and perhaps more importantly, provide proactive recommendations and suggestions based on user habits and behaviours. This will not only help to motivate the user to achieve their personal goals and adopt a healthier lifestyle far more efficiently, but also enhance the overall user experience of these types of apps.”

Interested?

Buy the report

Spotify identifies 1,369 musical genres - so far

Spotify has identified some of the strangest-named genres available today, thanks to a music intelligence platform that learns about music in real time to identify clusters of acoustic attributes.

"When a new genre forms, we know about it, so you can discover it right away, too," said Spotify's Data Storyteller Eliot Van Buskirk in a blog post.

The platform tracks how various songs and artists are trending among actual music fans, within genres, and can help fans compare genres like Luk Thung, Benga, and Zim.

Spotify's list of 50 strangest-named genres includes:

Drone folk: Drone music made with traditional folk instruments (guitar, banjo, strings, and possibly hurdy-gurdy).

Fallen angel: A dark, often-orchestral, form of metal that features female vocals.

Lowercase: Extreme ambient minimalist music featuring very quiet sounds, such as ruffling of papers, then amplifying them to an extreme volume.

Nerdcore: Hip hop music catered to 'nerds', with lyrics that may include science fiction and computer games.

Vegan straight edge: Hardcore punk that espouses a vegan and drug-free lifestyle. Lyrics feature themes about animal cruelty and clean living.

Interested?

Explore all 1,369 genres on everynoise.com.

Popular Moody's courses in Singapore include those on credit documentation and credit rating analyses

The following seminars are some of the most popular in Singapore, according to Moody's Analytics:

Covenants and Documentation

November 11 | Singapore | US$1,695 | 

The seminar will focus on how financial professionals should review credit documentation, and what pitfalls to look out for in this process. The course will focus on covenants and other features designed to protect investor interests and emphasize ways in which these defensive tools can be undermined by creative drafting. Moody's methodology for evaluating covenants in bond indentures will be discussed, and participants will learn how Moody's framework for assessing covenant quality can be applied to their daily work.

Register

Corporate Credit Rating Analysis

November 17 to 19 | Singapore | US$3,895 |  

This seminar provides delegates with an understanding of the rating practices employed by Moody's Investors Service for assessing corporate credit risk – from rating methodologies and financial ratios to a rating committee simulation. Designed as an intermediate level course, the underlying goal is to improve delegates' use of ratings in their work.

Register

Interested?

View Moody's Analytics' full Public Seminar suite 

A number of new courses to its portfolio have been added, none of which have upcoming dates listed for the Asia Pacific or Middle East regions as yet. These include:

• Capital Structure From IPO to Distress
• Corporate Governance - Applications and Implementation
• Debt Capital Markets
• Risk Culture Building Workshop
• Understanding Truthful and Deceptive Communication

Taking the guesswork out of analytics with BeyondCore Apps for Office

Source: BeyondCore website.

BeyondCore has launched BeyondCore Apps for Office, which it says is the world's first single-click automated analysis solution for the popular business productivity suite. The company has observed that analytics talent is scarce even though business users need access to fast, accurate, dynamic analysis in order to make confident, data-driven decisions to increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve processes.

"Analytics today is fundamentally a manual hunting process. The onus is on the user to ask the right questions, conduct the necessary statistical tests, interpret the graphs correctly, and take the most impactful actions. BeyondCore eliminates this heavy burden," BeyondCore CEO and Founder Arijit Sengupta said. "It reduces the risk of human errors and the distracting 'data noise' that could send you down a very wrong path."

With single-click analysis and detailed story-based explanations of insights directly integrated into the familiar Office suite, BeyondCore Apps for Office empowers business users to:

• Analyse data without the need to formulate sophisticated questions or design complex queries 
• Cut through the clutter to identify and act on the most relevant, statistically-sound patterns 
• Visualise, understand, interpret, share, and act on the results

"With BeyondCore Apps for Office, advanced analytics couldn't possibly be any easier," said Sengupta. "Just as Microsoft has empowered users to do more than they ever thought possible with data processing, word processing and presentation design through Excel, Word and PowerPoint, BeyondCore Apps for Office is adding automated analysis to that list of powerful and user-friendly experiences."

"We're excited to see the BeyondCore Apps for Office. It's a great example of our modern extensibility model and for delivering advanced analytics in Office, helping people to do more with their data by turning it into insights and understanding," said Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate VP, Microsoft for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team.

With BeyondCore Apps for Office, the Smart Pattern Discovery feature evaluates thousands of variable combinations, helping to identify insights, confirm statistical validity and create easy-to-understand stories explaining the results, all within minutes.

Results are presented as a PowerPoint presentation or a Word document, complete with speaker notes and narrative to explain each graph. BeyondCore also recommends optional insights that users can add to the document with a single click. They can also specify exactly which graphs they want to add, and BeyondCore automatically applies the same statistical rigour and generates a narrative explanation for the specified graph. 

BeyondCore's technology is based on eight years of research and two years of development, backed by 10 issued and more than a dozen pending patents. BeyondCore says its software has been used by 21 Fortune 100 companies and has been cited by Gartner, McKinsey and others for its approach to empowering business users with analytics.

Click here to see an online demonstration of BeyondCore Apps for Office, and here to find out more.

Moody's Analytics announces Spring 2015 Public Seminars

Moody's Analytics has announced its Spring 2015 Public Seminars Schedule. The company is offering group pricing for companies which send more than three colleagues to attend a public seminar. Email TrainingAsiaPac@moodys.com to discuss special arrangements. Seminars include:

Fundamentals of Corporate Credit

Reach sound judgments of a company's creditworthiness. Delegates will be able to identify and assess key qualitative and quantitative factors in determining credit risk. 

Location	Date	Price
Singapore	February 9 to 12	US$4,395
Hong Kong	May 11 to 14	US$4,395
Dubai	June 7 to 10	US$4,395
Sydney	August 31 to September 3	US$4,395
Singapore	December 8 to 11	US$4,395

Covenants and Documentation

Delegates will review credit documentation, and learn what pitfalls to look out for. The course will focus on covenants and other features designed to protect investor interests and emphasise how these tools can be undermined by creative drafting. Moody's methodology for evaluating covenants in bond indentures will be discussed, and participants will learn how Moody's framework for assessing covenant quality can be applied to their daily work.

Location	Date	Price
Hong Kong	May 15	US$1,695
Sydney	October 16	US$1,695
Singapore	November 5	US$1,695

Code Halos are a ticket to business success: Cognizant

According to Cognizant Technology Solutions, the most successful businesses today are making use of a new trademarked concept called 'Code Halo' to win. Specific data include digital clicks, swipes, "likes", purchases, comments and search actions, which can be built into a unique identity or Code Halo. 

Source: Cognizant. Roehrig.

Paul Roehrig, Global Managing Director of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work and Co-author of Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business, which reveals how organisations can catalyse business with Code Halo thinking, says that a growing number of businesses are finding new ways to compete with Code Halos.

"We’ve already seen early winners—for example, Google, Amazon, Pandora, and Netflix—and losers—like Kodak, HMV, and Borders. What’s exciting for business and technology leaders all over the world is that this same shift is starting to impact more traditional firms in banking, insurance, manufacturing, and retail. Public and private organisations in Asia Pacific are absolutely embracing digital transformation," he said. 

To get started at the individual level, Roehrig tells employees to maintain a 'code-friendly' mindset.

"When we work, where we work, how we work, who we work with, and how we manage are changing at a breakneck pace due to the emergence of the Code Halo economy. We devote a whole chapter to this in the book, but one of the most important recommendations is to manage your teams with code. It’s now imperative to hold yourself and your team accountable to a data-driven method of management by leveraging the massive amount of data swarming around you and your business processes," he said. 

"Information must be generated, managed, and shared openly. As we note in the book, the key is working with your team to determine your own data management supply chain: what data is important to you, how is it captured, what analytics do you utilise to understand your data, and is it utilised—and even enforced—in key portions, of your management process. Managers who ignore this trend and try to wing it or fly solely by intuition will be in for a rough time." 

The first chapter of the book can be downloaded here.