OVID-19 is changing the world and hitting retailers particularly hard; but in the medium to long term, might these changes lead to new opportunities for retailers and help level the playing field with e-commerce giants? Changes Inspired by COVID-19 So what are some of the longer term effects that we might see as a result […]

As in the case of Reckitt Benckiser, well-designed strategic performance dashboards can have a transformative effect on a business. So, what are the important principles that make such dashboards effective? Each day businesses carry out a great number of activities. However, some activities are more important than others. These are the activities on which the company’s strategic […]

Warren Buffett recommends that consumer firms “put a moat around their brands”. But the arrival of digital-first competitors means they might need something more up to date. Consumer firms’ strategic positioning rests on the power of brands – so everything depends on a firm’s ability to defend its brands. We discussed recently how strategic dashboards […]

Oddly (and fortunately), for our team at Inflexion Analytics and a number of companies like us, Coronavirus COVID-19 hasn’t changed the way we work. We’ve been using a remote globally distributed workforce since our founding in 2015. Remote working has been presented as a challenge for businesses, but we chose this model pre-pandemic because we […]

Hello, welcome to this Inflexion Analytics technical blog. If you’ve reached here then it’s safe to presume that you’d like to know how to import  ‘unnested’ data from BigQuery to Power BI. So let’s get started. What is UNNEST? UNNEST is a function used in Google BigQuery to convert an array into a set of […]

If you’re the CFO of a consumer business, it’s likely your business is becoming increasingly multi-channel. Your role in balancing investments between these channels and investments in brands is therefore increasingly demanding. Understanding the trade-offs between the investments in brands and investments in the retail channels that help reach consumers, is ever more challenging.  Investments in digital marketing will help build important strategic assets, such as brand equity and consumer intelligence. But the same brand equity risks being […]

There are more than a thousand different digital marketing automation tools available. There are few entry barriers into the digital marketing technology business. The underlying technology is cheap, the skills are readily available in the global gig economy, it is easy to scale, and the risks are low. So, the number of firms competing in […]

Introduction – Engaging Your Web Audience This note is for the CFOs of firms with a web presence and would like an outline roadmap for investing in that presence and the associated analytics. It is not addressed to people in digitally led, consumer-oriented businesses for whom digital is a strategic concern who will find other […]

You already make decisions using common-sense and data. Algorithms help by making it practical to use a lot more data. – if you have it. The logic behind the decisions, with or without algorithms, is often the same. For example, you already make decisions and predictions based on your understanding of relationships like the causal […]

Cloud services are now the default choice for all firms. The economies of scale available to the cloud service providers make this the most efficient way to provide storage and cloud computing capacity. Customers now pay for services based on capacity and usage and capacity can be scaled as required. Management of cloud services costs […]

Hi Again! I’m back with another post on BigQuery, Power BI and Google Sheets. Today, we’ll be looking at how to connect Power BI and Google Sheets. Ideally, I’d want to create a DirectQuery connection between Power BI and Google Sheets, because the data in my Google spreadsheet changes frequently, and we need the latest […]

One reason for the success of big Pharma is superior prowess in sales and marketing. Once R&D (Research & Development) has delivered a new patented innovation with global market potential, the marketing and sales activities promote rapid global adoption and shorten the time to peak sales within the patent life. Big Pharma has long dominated […]

Real-time Analytics is a way of analysing the data as soon as it’s generated. Data is processed as it arrives and the business gets insights delivered without any delay. Real-time Analytics is useful when you are looking to build analytics and reporting that you need to respond to quickly. It’s how we ensure the analysis […]

Introduction There are five key communities with an interest in sustainability; consumers, firms, investors, institutions, and governments. Consumer attitudes are hardening, firms and investors are scrambling to get measures in place, intergovernmental bodies are taking initiatives, politicians are trying to reach a consensus. The efforts of these communities are commendable. But the analytics for sustainability […]

The Azure cloud platform provides powerful, yet easy to use cloud-based tools for data transformation, data analytics and data science. These tools offer a lot of flexibility to Azure developers and cater to a variety of skill levels. This blog provides a brief run through of some of the features of the Azure tools for […]

A Portfolio of Project Risks Organizations that undertake many projects experience variance in the performance of each project and so adopt a portfolio approach to managing risk. The variance of the performance of the portfolio of projects will be lower than the variance of any individual project. The risks of the portfolio must be monitored […]

All firms are exploring AI opportunities and working out how to apply AI to their businesses. The widespread belief that AI will be transformational is behind the recommendation that firms make significant investments of time and money in creating the necessary capabilities. Though undoubtedly valid, this advice has large firms in mind – with substantial […]

How Supply Chain Resilience Is Used In Businesses The resilience of supply chains has been tested in recent years by some catastrophic events and by political disruption to trade flows. Supply chain managers have developed some pragmatic approaches to risk management and some useful tools, including the ability to visualise supply chain dynamics. These tools […]

Are you interested in leveraging Google Analytics to maximise the value of your data? In this article, we’ll review the Google Data Studio and break down how data analytics is transforming business. What is a ‘Daily Active User’? A Daily Active User (DAU) represents the total number of visitors who engaged with a web product […]

The next agricultural revolution is upon us, and farms with big data initiatives are set to see big benefits. With the world population set to reach 8.5 billion by the year 2030, farming businesses are facing enormous pressures to innovate—and fast. The biggest farms are already using technology to manage their activities, especially in the […]

While there are many ways to monitor sales force effectiveness, the actual course that any individual sales consultation takes can usually only be understood by people that are present. But this is beginning to change, and analytics can now be applied to sales consultations – both individually and in aggregate. Out of necessity, during Covid, […]

The new generation of analytics tools make it easy to produce visual analytics from data without technical skills. What is important now in analytics is the business and data understanding to create actionable insights. The top three things to consider when setting up your analytics would be: Aligning business priorities with analytics KPIs Getting the […]

Since its launch in 2010, of its cloud-based analytics software, Chartio has acquired a substantial base of satisfied customers. However, the recent decision by its new owners, Atlassian, to withdraw Chartio from the market, requires those customers to migrate their analytics to a new tool. The deadline for this change is 1st March 2022. So, […]

Large retail firms led the way in using cloud services to improve profitability, making improvements to the productivity of back-office functions and in facilitating omnichannel customer support. These approaches were so successful in enhancing their profitability that they are now entering the mainstream. Retailers used tools like Google Big Query to aggregate customer intelligence gathered […]