QC Technology Decisions Inc. is pleased to offer a new service that addresses one of the most common issues faced by companies wanting business intelligence. For as little as $225/month customers will have a dedicated resource to build and maintain your PowerBI or Cognos Insight dashboards.

While Software as a Service (Saas) solutions for business intelligence frameworks are providing new and exciting options to get new technologies faster; Resource constraints make it very difficult to keep pace with changes in these technologies.

Development as a Service (DevaaS) options from QC can give customers flexibility and reduces risk when choosing the direction they wish to take regarding business intelligence. In addition to having very little up-front costs, our services have the following benefits:

• Fixed monthly cost for per Dashboard is easy to budget and communicate to stakeholders
• Provides support for self-serve business intelligence
• Scale solutions without impacting your existing resources
• Allows existing resources to work on new projects
• Ensures dashboards can evolve with the business needs

QC combines technology and labor in efficient, effective ways so we can spring into action when needed. You simply pay a flat monthly fee for each product we develop, this covers the development and on-going support costs.

The monthly fee assumes that you already have licensing for the technology and will provide access to our consultants so that we may develop and support the products within your development, test and/or production environments. All work will be completed by a senior consultant remotely and confidentially.

We guarantee our services, if you don’t like the service for any reason you simply cancel your subscription.

For any dashboard to be useful the tool needs the ability to connect to real data. IBM and Microsoft technologies can connect to a variety of systems to pull data into their business intelligence tools. If you have not setup any framework for business intelligence yet QC can get you started with for as little as $4,500.

We recently read a post by Peter Ku in June titled Are you ready for the “Data Tsunami” from the Affordable Health Care Ruling and found it extremely interesting although my impression this is going to be more of an EARTHQUAKE than a tsunami.

Our team members have worked in health care for a number of years and they can all tell you that there is definitely no shortage of data.  This data is building up under our feet every day in hospitals, clinics and health care offices around the globe.. in essence the data is already out there.. hidden.. waiting to crack the surface!!!

Peter’s absolutely right in that there will soon be a huge inflow of new enrollments in the US related to the latest affordable health care ruling. This is going to rock and test the foundation each State has laid in connecting health information and put to the test both the technology and services that have been developed.   One thing is certain, if states have not moved past governance decisions at this point and established standard process/procedures for managing the information then we are sure to see more news reports soon of failed health exchanges.

Kudos to Peter for putting together such a great article that highlights the importance of data integration, security and data quality!!   We have been working with Informatica tools for many years and the are, without a doubt, leaders in their field.

Our belief is that data is complex only because organizations lack the tools to manage it properly. When managed properly understanding what to do with it becomes much easier and essentially starts to be managed like any other commodity or resource;  Some pioneers such as Facebook and google have found the formula to monetize it early, but the rest of the world is catching up!

Tsunami or Earthquake….  QC Technology Decisions Inc., can help prepare your business with a solid foundation and understanding so you can remain competitive.    If you are interested in learning more please contact us today!

Big Data seems to be all the “buzz” these days in the world of information management and business intelligence.    Of course, the first question everyone asks is “What is Big Data?” and I’ve heard various explanations all centred around the same theme… Sujal Patel explanation seems to best describe what Big Data in his talk at the 2010 CIO Forum Panel “Using Big Data to Drive Innovation”

His talk was titled, “The Era of On-Demand IT – Innovating to Catch the Big Data Wave.” Watch Video

“There is a huge amount of data out there. If you think about how we interact with media – cell phones, television, etc. – big data is all around us. It’s in the federal government in surveillance, security, border control, customs. … Everywhere you look there is big data.”

So what should we do with Big Data?
Don’t ignore it!  Doing so will most likely result in your students being left behind as others education agencies find ways to leverage it’s value.     Education Agencies have a tremendous opportunity to leverage big data.  Over the last 10 years there has been exceptional movement towards identification of students and the standardization of information exchange between schools, states and federal government.   Unlike  current initiatives in Health Care that are getting all the attention these days,  we believe education agencies (both state and local) are positioned very well to take advantage of big data in the following ways:

• Improved predictions in student success;  Technologies such as Hadoop have the potential for councilors to make near-real time predictions on student outcomes based on variables such as career path, graduation plan, location etc..
• Predicting student performance based on outside influences such as severe weather, labour relations, breaking news affecting students/schools, etc..
• Recommending post-secondary education choices;  Much like Amazon recommends products for you, schools have an opportunity to use  map-reduce algorithms found in Big Data technologies to narrow choices that will have the best possible long-term outcomes for the student economically.

How QC Technology Decisions can help realize value with Big Data?
Our Education Analytics Team members are recognized as experts in solution architecture, business intelligence, and enterprise systems development and implementation;  ready to lead complex implementations and deliver sustainable technical solutions for our customers.  They have led a number major IT projects such as configuring student information systems, web services integration, and business intelligence solutions for local and state agencies.

If you’re interested in Big Data for your organization and would like to talk to a representative please contact us today.

Additional Big Data Resources


The Atlantic
“The Big Data Boom Is the Innovation Story of Our Time”

Forbes
“Big Data Grows Up: Three Spaces to Watch Once the Hype Subsides”

Harvard Business Review
“Will Big Data Kill All But the Biggest Retailers?”

Mashable
“How Big Data Can Make Us Happier and Healthier”

McKinsey Global Institute
“Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity” 

MSN Business on Main
“How Small Businesses Are Innovating With ‘Big Data’”

New York Times Bits Blog
“Bizarre Insights From Big Data”

Pew Internet & American Life Project
“The Future of Big Data”

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/04/big-data-explosion/1729535/

World Economic Forum
“Big Data, Big Impact: New Possibilities for International Development”

ZD Net
“Big Data: All You Need to Know”