Introductions

Welcome to my Business Intelligence blog. I’ve been working in BI for quite a number of years now, delivering some successful and some not so successful projects and thought I should share my experience with other BI practitioners. The focus of this blog is to be primarily on the delivery and running of BI projects. There’s a wealth of technical information on the web on BI and BI products but not so much on how to deliver a BI project, for example, best practices when testing reports. I hope to add articles and information in this area that you will find useful and will bring benefit to your project. But first a little background to myself.

My first exposure to BI came back in 1995 when I was working for General Electric Aircraft Engines. I started with them as a graduate and joined the IT department of an aircraft engine overhaul facility. We were a small team and our work was quite varied. After a couple of years I was asked to work with the Data Warehouse team who were setting up a Data Warehouse covering all the aircraft engine overhaul sites. This was my first exposure to BI and BusinessObjects version 3.

After GE I worked for Business Objects and most of the technical articles here will be specific to or based on the BusinessObjects product line but I will also endeavour to include articles on other BI Tools.

For the last five years I have been working for a consultancy firm, specialising in designing and implementing BI solutions in a wide range of industries including retail, utilities and government projects. Having successfully delivered many projects I have built up a wealth of experience in understanding the challenges posed by delivering a BI projectand how to ensure a successful delivery that exceeds the clients expectation.

I hope this blog will be of interest and of use and will gladly receive any comments or thoughts you may have

regards

Al Gulland