PASS Business Analytics VC August Meeting – Maximize your Microsoft Investment with BI Office

The next PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter meeting is coming up next week on Thursday, August 25.  This month we welcome Pyramid Analytics and they will go over their BI Office product and show the Power BI on-premise solution.  If you are not familiar with Pyramid Analytics, they are one of the PASS national as well as local SQLSaturday sponsors.  If you attend a local SQLSaturday event or go to one of the major PASS Conferences (Summit or Business Analytics) make sure you stop by their location and check them out.

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Aug 25 – Maximizing your Microsoft investment with Pyramid Analytics BI Office

Abstract –

Pyramid Analytics BI Office is the top analytics platform for the Microsoft BI Platform. BI Office provides a complete on-premise or private cloud solution with unparalleled governance, security, and integration with Microsoft, including Power BI Desktop content. This session will provide an overview discussion and demo of the BI Office application, including advanced analytics with complex topics made easy (such as reusable R models). Target audiences include business analysts, data scientists and Power BI users.

Bios –

Peter Sprague is VP of Product Marketing at Pyramid Analytics. A veteran of ProClarity, Capstone and Microsoft; Peter Sprague has been developing analytic tools, and designing and deploying enterprise BI solutions for over 15 years.

John Hormaechea is Director of Product Marketing at Pyramid Analytics. John has previously worked at Microsoft as part of the SharePoint and Business Intelligence product marketing teams. and ProClarity in various sales, consulting, and training roles.

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If you are planning on attending the PASS Summit 2016 use the following discount code and save $150

Save $150 right now using discount code VC15BKR3

If you are interested in speaking at an upcoming PASS BA Virtual Chapter meeting we are always looking for speakers, please leave a comment or send us an email at PASSBAVC@SQLPASS.ORG

MN PASS Microsoft BI User Group Meeting – Aug 22

The next MN Microsoft BI User Group meeting is coming up on Monday, August 22. We will have two presentations, the first one is a case study from Lifetouch "Exceeding Six Sigma Email Address Quality" and the other will be by me (Dan English) on "Power BI: Dashboard in an Hour Walk-Through".

Please Register Now (Please register so that we can have your name badge pre-printed)

MN Microsoft BI User Group August 2016 Meeting

Sponsored by:

Date: Monday, August 22, 2016

Check In: 12:45 PM Event Time: 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Location: Microsoft Technology Center – 3601 76th St W, Suite 600 Edina MN 55435 (in LOW 1, 2, and 3)

Please Register Now (Please register so that we can have your name badge pre-printed)

Agenda:

• 12:45-1:00 : Check-In
• 1:00-1:45 : Pizza Lunch
• 1:45-2:00 : Microsoft BI User Group Updates and Announcements
• 2:00-3:00 : Exceeding Six Sigma Email Address Quality
• 3:00-3:15 : Break
• 3:15-4:15 : Power BI: Dashboard in an Hour Walk-Through
• 4:15-5:00 : Networking

Presentations:

Session 1: Exceeding Six Sigma Email Address Quality

While efforts around data quality and CRM have been around for quite a while, it seems that getting customer data clean and consistent remains a challenge for many organizations. While the causes for this are numerous, there are solutions available to improve the outcome of customer data cleansing efforts at a reasonable cost and without needing to spend several months of effort.

This presentation focuses on how through using software provided by Melissa Data, Pragmatic Works, and native functionality within the SQL Server platform an organization was able to achieve in excess of six sigma quality for email addresses and build a foundation for future customer data integration efforts. Email is a channel used by Marketing to inform and engage customers. Failure to have accurate data for email addresses can result in an email sender being identified as a spammer, or black listed as a result of sending too many incorrectly addressed emails to a given email domain (i.e. gmail, Hotmail, etc.). Using Selligent as the ESP (Email Service Provider) results of the data cleansing process were able to be validated at the receiving inbox. We will discuss what to look for in cleansing email addresses and how codes provided through Melissa Data software helped ensure spam traps were avoided, and erroneous email addresses were recovered (i.e. gmaill.com). While the project focus was email, the cleansing process also included name, address, and some limited demographics (using Census data); these will be covered as time allows.

What’s not covered? How to keep the data clean; keeping it clean varies with all the sources that produce and consume customer data and is often unique to each organization or situation.

Speaker: Chad Burdette, Data Management Team Lead

Chad currently leads the Data Management team for three Lifetouch divisions. He has over 25 years IT experience, holds certification from IBM as a DB2 DBA and Business Intelligence Expert, and from Microsoft as a Data Platform Sales Specialist. He started with the Microsoft BI stack when it wasn’t a stack using Microsoft EIS (Executive Information System) pack for Excel 3.0 back in the early 1990’s. Chad has served in multiple roles: ETL developer, Reports and Dashboard developer, Data Architect, Infrastructure Architect, DBA, Project Manager, and Leader. He is passionate about increasing customer relationships through the use of information to provide relevant points of engagement and interactions, and helping business better use the data they collect achieve superior results.

Session 2: Power BI: Dashboard in an Hour Walk-Through

This session will provide a walk-through example showcasing the Power BI tools including the Desktop, Service, and Mobile application. You will see how you can quickly access and explore data and gain insights from any device as well as collaborate and share the content with others. Some of the recent capabilities that have been released since our last meeting will also be demoed.  The content and examples will be provided after the meeting so that you can go through the walk-through examples on your own.

Speaker: Dan English, Senior Data Warehouse Architect

Dan is the Senior Data Warehouse Architect at Constellation, Inc. and is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, author, technical editor, and community leader. He has been developing with Microsoft technologies for over 15 years, and over 12 years with Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. He has been working with SQL Server since version 6.5 through 2016. Dan has videos on Vimeo, blogs (https://denglishbi.wordpress.com), and tweets (@denglishbi). Dan is the chapter leader for the PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter and on the executive leadership team for the MN Microsoft BI user group.

Planning on attending the PASS Summit?  If so, make sure to associate yourself with our user group and receive a $150 discount on registration!

PASS Summit 2016 – Use the following code to save $150 off registration LC15FML4