This edition of BI Trends and Strategies opens with a piece by Lou Agosta on the need for data warehouses to adapt to new data types, innovation and big data. Alan R. Earls also offers advice for incorporating spreadsheets into your BI programs without problems and Richard Herschel calls for universities to step up their BI and analytics programs. 

Enterprises can take control of the burgeoning number of unsanctioned spreadsheets by adopting a policy of centralized master spreadsheet generation. Learn how WebFOCUS creates fully summarized, organized, and styled Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas already in place, lowering the potential for keystroke and logic error. 

Pitney Bowes MapInfo® location intelligence solutions enable Time Warner Cable to more quickly and accurately identify new customers and increase sales. 

Read this paper to learn how Sage Fixed Assests software eliminates the need for spreadsheets and is designed specifically for the tracking of fixed assets to reduce over payments on taxes and insurance while improving your bottom line. 

Despite being so important, the process to create the annual report, the 10-K and the 10-Q is still stuck in the Middle Ages. This paper explores the history of annual reporting, the process of manually creating the annual report, and how to bring this process into the 21st century. 

Manual data entry can be cumbersome and time-consuming. This case study outlines how Wales & West Utilities successfully streamlined its SAP data loading and extraction process across multiple business areas. Discover how it uploaded over 750,000 transactions to save 2,284 working days over the course of just six months. 

With new technologies—such as planning and analysis solutions powered by IBM Cognos® software—companies are automating the process, getting faster reports and data that fuel “what is” and “what if” scenarios. Read this paper to learn more. 

The lead article in the May 2012 issue of SQL Server Insider addresses how SharePoint Server infrastructures should be managed in geographically dispersed organizations.  

If you’re like most midsize companies, the only way to grow the business is by being smarter and nimbler than the next guy. Watch this short video to see how you can be instantly executing your business strategy based on the latest, most accurate information, while the other guys are still trying to figure out exactly what just happened. 

Gartner analysts, William Clark, David W Cearley and Avivah Litan, explain how business can exploit context-aware computing and social media. 

This edition of BI Trends & Strategies features a lead article by SearchCIO.com's Linda Tucci, who offers a helping hand in the quest to dismantle the dreaded data silo. The second piece outlines mobile BI, including a reference to Apple's iPad, and the final article delves into the world of performance management. 

In this article, Kaplan, of Harvard Business School, and Norton, founder and director of the Palladium Group, explain how to effectively manage both strategy and operations by linking them tightly in a closed-loop management system, which comprises five stages. 

In this case study, learn how Follett Corporation was able to overcome their risk and compliance challenges by replacing existing processes with a single enterprise platform for all GRC programs that enabled streamlined and automated compliance, better visibility, and more.