Business intelligence for retards

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bump

>>62280033

A: LUCK
B: IMMORTALITY
C: LOVE
D: POWER
E: WEALTH

If I'm bascially immortal and super lucky, I don't need to have much money.


As for your question:

>Have any of you managed to get your colleagues to use anything more complicated than Excel?

If people are good with Excel, they are usually easy to motivate to learn Access. Just sell it as a "more powerfull" version of Excel, no need to begin with normal forms..


>What hurdles did you run into, and how did you overcome them?

Obviously a database is much more complex and powerfull. But the questions is what features do you need? Access comes with some halfway decent drag-and-drop editors.

But you should give them one/two days training (you can do it yourself, if you want to) to get the fundamentals of Access.

Just make a few slides to explain some basic principles ("no, you can't just pull this row up here, since they are sorted"), some examples and some group exercises. And then give them a book and tell them to google up things they don't know.

Ususally people are happy to learn new technologies as it improves their skill profile.

>>62280033
you got a comfy job, why automate it and lose all dem easy bux?

Also a lot of business people arent dumb but they cant or dont want into technology, a lot of oldfags, they just dont like it, what they do like is doing actual business things, so consider yourself lucky that they keep you in a position for this

>>62280708
thanks for the advice anon
luck maximising build all day every day
>>62280717
>why automate your job
1-800-come-on-now
but seriously its a government owned enterprise, and if i can save them my salary every year, which is the plan eventually, then i want to
will post part three in an hour or so for final bump

>>62280846
>if i can save them my salary every year, which is the plan eventually, then i want to
you are stupid, while you save goverment money, the savings will be spent on foreign aid to feed and breed more africans, military programs, nigger welfare, or to fund liberal groups

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last bump

>>62280846

You're welcome!

>>62281263

Damn, I'm glad I didn't take one of the boxes.
That's nasty..

>>62280033
> but how does one go about getting other people to deal with a database?
PMA/PHPpgadmin.
Or, if that's something specific like MSSQL w/Sharepoint and MSProject and OLAP cubes, managers usually hire a programmer to make SQL queries for them.

Why do they need anything more complicated than Excel? PivotTables have a pretty basic config interface. Create a series of dashboards in a workbook each themed to a certain metric. Add in a timeline slicer to each so they can just click and drag to adjust the analysis period. Then slap a table and a chart on the sheet, link it to your data store and give them a run down on how to edit rows/columns, change value types between total/count/etc. and then capture a copy of the table or chart when they're done.

Actually this >>62281547. Alternative solution: tableau, but it's paid software.
Just make sure to actually communicate with your end users to not set up something that does shit they don't want and doesn't do shit they need.

>>62281512
>hire a programmer to make SQL queries for them
this is precisely what i want to avoid, im looking for a way for regular joes to query a database or two to answer their own questions by themselves
the biggest issue is around our billing and inventory data, currently we're generating just shy of a million rows of data every year in MySQL, which is stored on a remote windows server, and edited by this industry specific software, which has crap reporting options. So for analysing trends over multiple years, such as the gradual drop off in product use by several customers over a ten year period, excel is right out >>62281547 >>62281601
tableau looks interesting though, and at only $35 a month, it might be worthwhile, this sort of simplicity, dragging and dropping is probably ideal

Easy mode: Excel pivot tables, or power query. Even better if you got Excel 2016.
Medium mode: Power BI Report Server (August 2017 preview, on premises).
You can use Power BI desktop for free first and see if it fits your needs.
Shit's really easy to build nice reports with.