The new QuickLaunch for Vista release includes several ways to expand your ERP analysis to even more business areas. We’ll explore how you can optimize payroll processes, improve work order management, and keep your accounting team happy. Get ready for Take Off!

Optimize Payroll Processes with the New Payroll Detail Prospective

In the Viewpoint Vista ERP application, payroll transactions can be initiated in multiple sub-systems such as Job Cost, Equipment Maintenance, and Service Management.  All those feed transactions to a payroll table in order to calculate deductions (like taxes) and liabilities (like vacation) in order to determine gross and net pay.

The new payroll detail perspective in QuickLaunch provides a way to analyze company payroll data including straight time, overtime, gross pay, deductions, liabilities, and net pay.  This allows aggregated and detailed analysis by a multitude of dimensions including employee, craft, class, pay type, department, job, equipment, service center, etc.

This type of payroll analysis can help you with the identification of potentially missing payroll transactions (avoiding the expense of issuing a manual check) and duplicate payroll records (in the event a timecard was inadvertently entered twice).  Research into payroll irregularities is much faster with a comprehensive enterprise data platform.

Streamline Work Order Management with Equipment Work Orders and Preventative Maintenance

Until now, the QuickLaunch for Vista equipment perspective only included work order costs and hours for completed work.  Our new Equipment Work Order and Preventative Maintenance perspective provides comprehensive insight into all work orders including future work orders (scheduled maintenance), current work orders (including those not started or assigned) and completed work orders.

Work order activity can be analyzed by counts, backlog, assignments, department, category, component technician, item, etc. to balance workload and maximize productivity. This will enable you to compare estimated versus actual costs and hours to improve performance.  Also, using extensive time-based measures, equipment managers will be able identify trends and outliers to manage and schedule assignments more effectively.

Extend Asset Life with Equipment Warranty Enhancements

Out-of-the-box, Vista is good at identifying individual warranties on a single piece of equipment but that is the extent. The latest QuickLaunch for Vista release provides broader warranty analysis capabilities including identifying remaining warranty periods or miles.

Warranty analysis by equipment, category, component, and vendor will enable you to reduce costs by optimizing product and warranty decisions.  And best of all, the new warranty functionality is an integrated addition to the existing Equipment module.

Make your Audit Teams Happy with Our New Compliance Perspective

Vista stores compliance records in three separate tables; Vendor Compliance, Purchase Order Compliance, and Subcontract Compliance.  Our compliance perspective merges these separate tables into one to provide a comprehensive view so that all compliance requirements and statuses for a vendor or contract can be seen in one glance.

This single version of compliance truth will allow AP staff to resolve invoice hold inquiries quickly and will also allow project management staff to put pressure on subcontractors and vendors before their compliance status expires which leads to risk reduction.

Sign Up for QuickLaunch for Vista 5.2 Release Notes Webinar

The post QuickLaunch for Vista Release Notes: Payroll Detail, Equipment Maintenance, Warranty Details and Much More! appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

In this on-going series we will comb thru all of the latest updates and provide you with an overview of the most important features that are relevant to common enterprise analytics scenarios and deployments. We do this in the form of a live presentation with demos as well as a blog with mini recorded demos. Click here to watch the corresponding live education session recording.

Power BI Consumers

Power BI Goes Green

Late last year, Power BI announced that it would switch its application accent coloring from yellow to teal in order to make it more accessible for users with disabilities. This color coincidentally (or not) also matches the color scheme for the new Fabric platform announced last month that will include Power BI. More on that to come soon but if you have started to see the green Fabric logo in the Power BI Service…this is why.

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Subscribe to Personalized Views of Reports with Filters Applied

With the latest updates to the Subscribe feature, you can modify reports to be more relevant to yourself and then subscribe to that view. To do this, choose the Include my changes option in the Subscribe to emails window. This personalized view will include any of the following changes: filters, slicers, personalize visuals, cross-filtering or cross-highlighting, drill down or drill up, and spotlight.

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Enhanced Integration Between Power BI and PowerPoint

In past iterations of this presentation/blog we showed you how you can embed Power BI reports into a presentation using the Power BI Add in for PowerPoint. Taking that a step further, you can now embed single visualizations that pertain to your slide. This allows people to easily make their presentations more interactive and informative. To do this simply click the Share option in the visual menu and then paste the provided link into the PBI Add in dialog box.

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Power BI Designers

Quick Measure Suggestions (Preview Feature)

Building on the Quick Measures feature that was introduced a few years ago, the Power BI team has introduced natural language query technology into the fold to automatically generate DAX code suggestions to users. This accelerates the learning curve to get started with creating measures in Power BI and is a taste of what’s to come with Copilot generative AI features coming soon. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to take some DAX classes or validate and test your measures in addition to having a formalized process for introducing these into your company’s centralized data model.

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Enhanced Report Authoring with the Optimize Ribbon

With the new Optimize ribbon, report creators can improve both the development process and the consumer process through three new features that were combined with the Performance Analyzer feature. The first is the Pause visuals button which stops Power BI from sending queries while you are making changes to your report. Next up are Optimization Presets. These allow you to apply different settings combinations for Query Reduction, maximum Interactivity, or a custom blend of settings that works best for your needs. Lastly, the new ribbon allows you to add an Apply All Slicers button to a report that will turn off the visual refresh while users are making slicer value selections. These features are particularly useful for users who are working with very large datasets or a Direct Query report and need to optimize the user experience or for scenarios where consumers request many slicers which can slow down report performance.

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Improvements to the Small Multiple Visual

The Small Multiple Visual was a great addition to the visualization suite in Power BI but it had a few gaps when released including making it more legible as you scaled the number of multiples. Fortunately, this has been addressed with the ability to unsynchronized the axes and scale each chart individually. This is accomplished by unsharing the y-axes and enabling the scale to fit option.

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Create Dynamic Slicers with the New Field Parameter Feature

In the last iteration of this blog/presentation (link to blog), we demonstrated how you can use the Field Parameter feature in PBI to create dynamic visualizations and perform scenario analyses. With the latest update to this feature, you can now create dynamic slicers to allow users to slice by the values of the dimension parameter slicer. To do this you need to copy and paste the dimension parameter slicer and choose the option to show the values of the selected field in the field well.

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Conditionally Format Visual Elements based on Text/String Fields

This is an exciting update because in the past the standard options only included support for numeric based conditional formatting and in order to accomplish this you had to do some fancy footwork in DAX adding new fields that linked string values to color codes. Now you just have to choose the format by Rules option and select the string field you want to use and list the value in the rule dialog box.

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Smart Narrative Feature Built in for Visual Summaries

Power BI introduced its Natural Language Generation feature, Smart Narratives, a couple years ago but up until now you had to create a dedicated visual on your canvas to house this written analysis. However with this update you can enable your consumers to get these ML generated features on demand for each visual on your page to expose new insights. To enable for your report, simply click on the visual and then enable the Smart Narrative icon in the Format pane.

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Update to Page Navigator Visual

No more hiding and unhiding pages in your report! Now you can easily choose with pages to include or not include using the Pages section of the formatting pane. This feature is especially useful if you have a lot of pages in your report.

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Enhance Your Visual Containers with New Subtitles, Dividers, Spacing and Padding Settings

In the last iteration of this blog/presentation (link to blog), we demonstrated how you can use the Field Parameter feature in PBI to create dynamic visualizations and perform scenario analyses. With the latest update to this feature, you can now create dynamic slicers to allow users to slice by the values of the dimension parameter slicer. To do this you need to copy and paste the dimension parameter slicer and choose the option to show the values of the selected field in the field well.

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Power BI Admins & Content Managers

Paginated Reports Supported for Power BI Pro Workspaces

Before late last year, Paginated Reports were only supported in Premium workspaces but that restriction has been lifted and you can now publish these traditional operational style reports with a Pro license. In addition, there is a new migration tool as part of SQL Server 2022 that will help customers migrate SSRS reports to the Power BI Service which can help free up resources on your SQL server instances. These two updates should allow most companies to start using Paginated Reports alongside there interactive Power BI reports.

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Allow Email Subscriptions to be Sent to External Users (Premium Feature)

If content is backed by either a Premium Capacity or Premium Per User license, users can set up subscriptions for external users that are not inside your company and haven’t been invited to your Azure AD B2B directory. You can control which users and security groups have access to this or to disable the feature in the tenant settings section of the Admin Portal.

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Improved Way to Upload and Manage Power BI and Excel Files

There’s a new way to upload Power BI Excel files in Power BI and it’s much better. The UX has changed and now there is a drop down for Upload in the top of the workspace screen where you can choose to upload a file from Sharepoint or OneDrive for Business as well as Browsing your pc for a local file. The advantage of Sharepoint and OneDrive method is that your saved changes from PBI Desktop are saved automatically about every hour.

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Intro to Fabric and Enabling the new Fabric Platform for Your Tenant (Preview Feature)

Fabric is the new end-to-end cloud analytics platform from Microsoft that includes a Data Factory-powered data integration experience, Synapse-powered data engineering, data warehouse, data science, and real-time analytics experiences and business intelligence (BI) with Power BI; all connected to one data lake (OneLake) and delivered as a SaaS solution. Stay tuned for the next iteration of this PBI updates series where we will peel back the different layers of Fabric and discuss their readiness for enterprise analytics as well as provide demonstrations over QuickLaunch data.

In the meantime, if you’re a PBI Admin, you can choose to turn on the Fabric platform preview for your tenant, by enabling the new corresponding tenant setting. If you don’t choose to opt out by July 1st, 2023, it will automatically be turned on. If you do opt out before then, it will stay off until you enable it.

For customers running Power BI Premium capacities through P SKUs, the new Fabric experiences will not affect your resource usage on your capacity before August 1st, 2023.

Starting in June, the Power BI Administrator Role will be renamed the Fabric Administrator to align with changing scope of new platform.

Starting in June, the Power BI Free license will be renamed to the Microsoft Fabric (Free) license.
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That wraps up this installment of the Power BI updates blog. Join us for Part 2 of this presentation on July 20th by registering here. If you’re interested in checking out the Power BI feature release plan in an interactive Power BI report click here.

The post Power BI Updates for Enterprise Analytics: Q2 2023 – Part 1 appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Your ERP can track activities that naturally occur in your business. This software can coordinate the flow between all these activities with the data it collects, often in real-time. Most companies’ ERP collects information that can increase productivity, cut costs, and identify bottlenecks, and they are not utilizing it. Join us as we discuss how you can get more out of your ERP system.

ERP Data Management

Your ERP data, no matter how complex, can be transformed into decision-ready information so you can make business decisions faster and with more confidence. You can utilize analytics and reporting platforms to easily access, transform, and provide a foundation for deep reporting. And it can easily integrate with various other software programs you use and analyze your ERP data (as well as CRM).

How an ERP Can Monitor Your Business

If your business is collecting data from numerous departments within the company, your ERP is your best resource for truly understanding the health of your organization. Instead of running around trying to figure out where each department of your organization is struggling, you can look at the ERP system. It allows you to display the overall picture of your business in one dashboard. Financially, this tool can let you know where your business needs to be focusing more attention and where you’re wasting your time and resources. 

It is important to note that when using your ERP software, you want to ensure you have proper security measures. The last thing you want is a cybercriminal hacking into your system and using this valuable information against you. So, ensure any data you are collecting from external sources is checked before entering the system.

ERP Example

Oracle has a great example of how a company can use ERP data to benefit their business. In their example, they look at a company that builds cars by procuring parts from multiple suppliers. This company can use its ERP system to track those purchases and ensure each component across the procure-to-pay process uses clean and uniform data connected to workflows, reporting, processes, and analytics. The data from the ERP system allows the company to run smoother, faster, and more cost-efficient by always knowing what is in process.

How to Utilize ERP Analytics

With your ERP software, your business can collect and analyze data from internal activities. While collecting large amounts of data is great, a problem can arise when so much information is being collected. Without proper visualization software, your team can spend countless hours trying to pull data that is valuable. Plus, if you need these insights on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the money and time spent sifting through the information is not the best utilization of your resources.

Investing in an analytics system to integrate with your ERP is vital to understanding your data. Analytics for your ERP takes the information received from various systems throughout your organization and streamlines it in real-time. It will compile all the information into a unified view allowing for easier collaboration throughout the entire business. You will no longer have to pull from multiple reports to paint a big picture; the picture is already framed for you and ready to go.

Are You Utilizing Your ERP To Its Full Potential?

If you answered, I think so, or I don’t know, you most likely are not utilizing your ERP to its full potential. While your ERP is full of rich information, without visualization software like Power BI, it takes painstaking hours to gain the amazing insights that your ERP has to offer.

If you want to talk specifics about how to get more out of your ERP, we encourage you to give us a call. Our team of hardworking, talented data junkies is dedicated to helping organizations turn their ERP (and CRM) data into decision-ready information. As a result, we help our clients gain the competitive advantage they need to make smarter business decisions, improve operational efficiencies, and increase profitability and overall revenue.

Schedule A Call Today!

The post ERP Data: Are You Using It or Just Collecting It? appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Soquel, CA  – Preferred Strategies, a leader in data transformation, modern business intelligence, and data analytics innovation, today announced its industry unique four-week trial offering of QuickLaunch Test Drive is now available. QuickLaunch Test Drive is designed to help forward-thinking companies running JD Edwards (JDE) learn how to improve the way data can be accessed and analyzed throughout their organization. It also allows these companies to experience how modern business intelligence (BI) technologies like Microsoft Power BI can work best when implemented over their own JDE data.

Microsoft Power BI is consistently recognized as the “go to” platform in the marketplace. In the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms, Power BI was the clear leader once again and Microsoft has been in the Leaders quadrant for the past 14 years. During the past six years, Power BI has been adopted by more than 250,000 organizations including 97 percent of Fortune 500 companies. For companies that already leverage Power BI, but haven’t harnessed its full potential, or those that are interested in experiencing its benefits for the first time, the QuickLaunch Test Drive program is a great place to start.

“If you run JDE as your ERP and want to know how successfully implementing a Modern BI, Reporting, and Analytics technology like Power BI will change the way your company thinks about and operates around data, the QuickLaunch Test Drive is perfect for you,” said Adam Crigger, Founder and President, Preferred Strategies. “As many companies lack the awareness of how Power BI can improve operational efficiencies, team-member satisfaction, and increase profitability, we wanted to find a way for customers to experience this for themselves and the QuickLaunch Test Drive does just that. During the trial, we will transform your JDE General Ledger and/or Sales data into actionable information, identify patterns in your data instantaneously, and shorten report development times.”

QuickLaunch Test Drive program participants will have access for up to four weeks. Throughout the program, Preferred Strategies will provide hands-on education workshops and working sessions for your report authors around Sales and/or General Ledger, and provide a preview and introduction for executives. Those who take advantage of the QuickLaunch Test Drive over their live JD Edwards data will experience firsthand the positive impact and transformation the Preferred Strategies solution can have on their operations and organization.

After the completion of the QuickLaunch Test Drive program, for a limited time, 100 percent of the set up fee will be credited back to the customer upon receipt of a signed agreement within 30-days after the program.

To understand what the QuickLaunch Test Drive program can do for your organization:

• Visit https://preferredstrategies.com/trial/
• email info@preferredstrategies.com
• or call 1-888-232-7337

About Preferred Strategies

Preferred Strategies was founded in 2002 by experienced JD Edwards business users and IT professionals. While working at a large construction materials and contracting company, Preferred Strategies’ Founder & President, Adam Crigger, experienced firsthand the difficulty in extracting data from JD Edwards and translating that data into meaningful reports and analytics. Today, Preferred Strategies is helping hundreds of JD Edwards, Viewpoint Vista, and Salesforce customers realize the full potential of their ERP and CRM data through the innovative Preferred Strategies QuickLaunch product. Combining decades of business and technical experience working with JD Edwards, NetSuite, Viewpoint Vista, and Salesforce data and modern reporting tools such as Microsoft® Power BI, QuickLaunch delivers the framework every customer needs to succeed on their data driven journey. For more information, visit http://www.preferredstrategies.com.

The post Preferred Strategies Invites JD Edwards Users to Take a QuickLaunch Test Drive appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

These days, most employees are experiencing burnout. Meanwhile, the power of technology to allow a business to grow is increasing every day. Unfortunately, this is causing an acceleration gap, meaning the difference between the pace of technology and the ability of companies to keep up is getting farther and farther apart. This is why it is so vital your organization adapts to change quickly.

Adapting to Change

The COVID-19 pandemic is the most recent example of drastic change that happened nearly overnight. Those companies that were able to pivot made it through, but those that couldn’t, faltered. 

And let’s face it, most of us don’t like change. We resist it. But this is precisely why organizations need help, specifically when it comes to their data. Data is key. Organizations that utilize the data available are better equipped to adapt to change. 

To close the acceleration gap, businesses must make informed and strategic decisions. This will help them increase efficiency, cut labor costs, and gain valuable insights for future opportunities. Companies that can adapt to change are more profitable and more competitive. These are the companies that thrive.

However, it’s not that simple. There are lots of software programs out there that can deliver data. What organizations really need is a program that can deliver the data and help the end-user interpret the data. 

Closing the Acceleration Gap

To close the digital acceleration gap and reap the rewards for your organization, you need to collect data and know how to interpret it. When correctly reading the data available to you, your organization will be able to: 

• Quickly pivot strategies (move from tactics that aren’t working to refocus on the ones that are)
• Reduce uncertainty, which will allow your employees to feel more confident in their work
• Evaluate performance (ROI)
• Operate in real-time

You cannot close the acceleration gap without the proper software reporting to give you the analytics you need to make these changes in real-time.

The Practice of Strategic Change

According to a recent Deloitte report, “Human nature makes it difficult to speed up the way individuals change. The way to create Organizational Acceleration is to fine-tune change at the organizational level.” The gist of the report is that change is always happening. That doesn’t just include change from the outside world, but internally. So how your organization deals with change will change too.

Correctly Using Analytics

Data and analytics will allow you to see change happening in real-time. When you utilize the right tools, you can make more precise interpretations of the data you have. This can help you decrease the wasted time your employees spend going down one rabbit hole to the next. 

With proper analytics, your organization can better target the change it needs to close the acceleration gap. Then, as your company flexes its agility muscles, you’ll find it easier to pivot through all the changes life throws (such as a pandemic!).

Change Starts at the Top

It may seem that the driving force for change and closing the acceleration gap begins with the employees; after all, they will likely be the ones reporting on what the data is telling them. However, for a company to truly adapt to change, it has to start with those at the top. Organizational leaders must be ready to take that data and run with it. They must accept that they will have to make changes quickly and help those working under them. 

How Preferred Strategies Can Help

If your company is ready to close the acceleration gap and adapt to change, Preferred Strategies can help. Our technology acceleration partners include Microsoft, Oracle, and Viewpoint, just to name a few.

With our QuickLaunch Information Engine, we can interpret your ERP and CRM data, making your organization more efficient and profitable. Our “best in class” reporting and analytics tools help organizations realize the full value of their data within weeks.

Start Adapting Today!

The post The Acceleration Gap: Is Your Organization Adapting to Change appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

James Bradshaw of Ernst & Young states, “To be truly successful, organizational leadership must agree that data is an asset worth investing in. From the boardroom to the C-suite, this focus on data and analytics driving decision making is crucial.”

So, how do you untangle your data into the meaningful information you need to make informed, strategic business decisions? The answer: with Power BI.

Business Intelligence with Power BI

Power BI is Microsoft’s unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence. An AI-powered program, Power BI connects to your various systems, allowing you to model and visualize your information into actionable, data-driven decisions. In other words, your raw data is modified into a usable format that informs effective strategic actions. Most importantly, with Power BI’s ease of use, employees at all levels can be empowered to utilize analytics in their reporting, planning, and decision-making processes.

One Version of Truth is Critical – Data Validated Across All Sources

To have total confidence in your business decisions, you need data that is validated across all your platforms. Data validation helps to weed out the outliers caused by issues such as manual data entry errors, which can be as high as 4%. Even with a leading analytics tool like Power BI, validating data across multiple sources is essential to be successful. Paring Power BI with a governed data model drives analytic efficiencies throughout the enterprise. Drawing from one version of truth enables a leaner approach to analytics and improves the consistency of information shared throughout your organization.

Compelling Visualizations Foster Actionable Insights

Brian Hopkins, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester shared, “In this emerging world of too much data, what matters most is how you discover and implement digital insight in the fabric of your business.” With machine learning, Power BI analyzes information and draws conclusions. This AI forecasting, coupled with the compelling data visualization Power BI provides, enables companies to identify trends and anticipate challenges. Having easily accessible actionable insights means your organization can spot opportunities for improvement and transformation that lead to increased efficiency, reduced labor costs, and greater profitability and competitiveness.

Real-Time Solutions Require Actionable Data

Receiving a report on Thursday afternoon that you didn’t make a crucial delivery that morning only allows for reactive damage control. If you cannot identify and resolve problems before they happen, there is no strategic decision-making, only strategic apologizing. Having all the information you need at your fingertips in near real-time enables your team to pivot intelligently. Data visualization illuminates potential issues allowing organizations to adapt to fast-changing market conditions, uncertainties, and disruptions.

Data Transformation for Profitability and Competitiveness

We are in the decision-making business. If your organization is ready to invest in a true data transformation, our QuickLaunch Information Engine for Power BI will untangle all your data. Don’t fall within the 70 to 80 percent of companies whose business intelligence initiatives fail. Preferred Strategies clients’ have a 96% success rate.

In today’s environment, business truly moves at the speed of light. Your access to your data needs to be as well in order to make actionable and timely decisions.

Let’s Talk!

The post Organizational Decision-Making: Untangling Your Data with Power BI appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Soquel, CA  – Preferred Strategies, the leader in data transformation, modern business intelligence, and data analytics innovation for over 20 years, today announced milestones and highlights for 2021 featuring record-breaking year-over-year revenue and customer growth, and an unprecedented expansion of its supported strategic technologies. The company is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its launch in February 2002.

Company highlights from 2021 include the following:

• Posted record breaking increases in year-over-year customer base and revenue growth
• Reported 37 percent staff growth with more positions to fill in 2022
• Expanded QuickLaunch product line for Salesforce and NetSuite users
• Launched redesigned website showcasing unique features and benefits, updated QuickLaunch solutions, and extensive educational content.
• Announced an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) as the first step towards its transition to becoming an employee-owned company
• Closed the year with a customer Net Promoter Score® of 74
• Earned an employee Net Promoter Score® (eNPS) of 92

“We’re driving towards our 20th anniversary with significant momentum and a team dedicated to providing world class service to our valued customers,” said Adam Crigger, Founder and President, Preferred Strategies. “Our company is comprised of intelligent, passionate, and hardworking individuals who constantly strive to grow and strengthen our customer satisfaction and relationships.”

Founded in 2002, Preferred Strategies has grown from a team of four people to 27 across the U.S. today, with plans to further expand its workforce in 2022. Today, the company works with Salesforce, JD Edwards, NetSuite and Viewpoint Vista users to help them realize the full potential of their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data through the innovative Preferred Strategies QuickLaunch product.

“At Preferred Strategies, we help companies access data that is hard to get to and understand, and turn it into usable information so team members and leaders are equipped to make better decisions that positively impact their business,” said Crigger. “Our QuickLaunch Information Engine empowers our customers to make smarter business decisions and improve operational efficiencies that boost bottom-line performance.”

Preferred Strategies will be making more announcements in Q1 2022. In the meantime, to learn more about working with Preferred Strategies, please visit https://preferredstrategies.com/careers/.

About Preferred Strategies

Preferred Strategies was founded in 2002 by experienced JD Edwards business users and IT professionals. While working at a large construction materials and contracting company, Preferred Strategies’ Founder & President, Adam Crigger, experienced firsthand the difficulty in extracting data from JD Edwards and translating that data into meaningful reports and analytics. Today, Preferred Strategies is helping hundreds of JD Edwards and Viewpoint Vista customers to realize the full potential of their ERP data through the innovative Preferred Strategies QuickLaunch product. Combining decades of business and technical experience working with JD Edwards and Viewpoint Vista data and modern reporting tools such as Microsoft® Power BI, QuickLaunch delivers the framework every customer needs to succeed on their data driven journey. For more information, visit http://www.preferredstrategies.com.

The post Preferred Strategies Celebrates 20th Anniversary by Closing 2021 with Record Increases in Customer Base and Annual Revenue Growth appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Preferred Strategies has been an innovator and thought leader in the Business Intelligence and Data Analytics space for over 20 years. The QuickLaunch solution is an Information Engine designed to help companies access data that is hard to get to and understand, and turn it into useable information so employees and leaders are equipped to make better decisions that positively impact their business. The QuickLaunch framework is built on the Microsoft Power BI platform and offers cutting edge visualization and analytics functionality across all corporate data sources. The solution allows organizations to access and use their data as a strategic asset to make informed business decisions, increase efficiency, reduce labor costs and gain powerful insights to future opportunities that ultimately make their company more profitable and competitive.

The iShift Platform is a comprehensive solution to guide businesses undergoing cloud migration. It encompasses a fully hosted and managed cloud environment and the stack of applications that meet the organization’s needs for value and profitability following the highest security standards, governance, and compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.

When a Preferred Strategies client approached them for guidance on best practices in setting up a cloud-based deployment of QuickLaunch, Preferred Strategies brought in iShift as a strategic partner to advise, plan, and design the right Azure cloud environment. As a Microsoft Azure partner, iShift had the knowledge, certifications, and resources to plan and set up the right cloud infrastructure. As a result of the joint project, Preferred Strategies will deploy QuickLaunch on Azure leveraging the iShift Platform.

The partnership between the two companies is determined by several factors: the shared values and uncompromising dedication to client success, the focus on transforming technological innovation into a business advantage, and the firm belief that when it comes specific competencies, it makes sense to find the experts that will complement the gaps in know-how.

According to Mark Googins, CEO of iShift, “Our teams are passionate about building long-term trusting partnerships with our clients and delivering the competitive advantage they need to grow their business, improve operational efficiencies, and increase profitability. We are very excited to build our relationship with Preferred Strategies for the long-term by offering organizations innovative cloud-based solutions that will help them turn their data into decision ready information.”

According to Adam Crigger, Founder and President of Preferred Strategies, “In today’s ever-changing business climate, organizations need to be able to access their enterprise data anywhere anytime. The cloud environment that the iShift Platform offers provides this flexibility. We are continuing our tradition of pursuing strategic partnerships to deliver modern solutions with enhanced capabilities to clients and empower businesses to realize the full potential of their ERP data.”

About Preferred Strategies

In order to be successful and competitive in today’s landscape organizations need to easily access, consume and digest corporate wide data and information. Preferred Strategies is an innovative leader in the decision-making business. Our QuickLaunch solution leads to higher data literacy and corporate wide success because our scalable platform provides customers with a governed decision framework model delivering a single source of truth across all data sources…empowering leaders to make strategic, informed and educated business decisions across the organization. We partner with companies to transform their data into meaningful information displayed in customized dashboards, KPI’s, graphs, charts, key metrics, and reports, with the ability to drill down and through the information to clearly identify insights, trends, and outliers. With hundreds of successful customer partnerships, QuickLaunch has been proven to deliver the perfect balance of user friendly and empowering, innovative functionality, near real time data access, and IT governance without the heavy lifting that competitive organizations require to take their companies to the next level of success. At Preferred Strategies we don’t shy away from what is hard, we come right for it, and we succeed! To learn more about how we can help you accomplish your business goals, visit www.preferredstrategies.com

About iShift

iShift is a multi-cloud technology solutions company that provides cloud engineering, cloud migration, cloud management and specialized IT staffing services. Our mission is to help businesses to simplify and accelerate growth while enabling digital transformation and IT modernization. No matter where organizations are in their cloud journey, iShift can design, build, optimize and manage a future-ready multi-cloud environment, resulting in significant cost savings, increased workforce productivity, operational resilience, continuity of services, and business agility. For more information on how our offerings empower businesses through their adoption of cloud and modern technology, visit www.ishift.net.

The post iShift and Preferred Strategies Partner to Enable Businesses to Make the Most of Their Enterprise Information in the Cloud appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Power BI Consumers

Automated Insights Feature (Preview Feature) (Premium Feature)

Leverage the latest automated machine learning feature built into the Power BI consumer experience to easily find and explore insights such as trends, outliers, and KPI analysis with the click of a button inside a report. The Insights feature is context aware so that as you change filters and pages in your report, new insights will be generated. This is an exciting development as reports that were in “Live Connection” previously didn’t not work with many of the latest AI Power BI features.

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Analyze Teams Usages with Power BI Teams App

If you are one of the millions of professionals that has adopted Microsoft’s collaboration app over the past couple of years then this update may interest you. From the Power BI app in Teams, you can easily analyze Teams usage data. The auto generated report includes a My Activity page that shows your personal usage information, a Team activity page allows you to compare general metrics across all the teams you’re a part of, and the Team activity details.

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Power BI Designers

Direct Query for Azure Analysis Services and Power BI Datasets (Preview Feature)

With this feature, power users and report authors create a local model that connects to existing Azure Analysis Services data models and Power BI Datasets and bring in data from other data sources such Excel workbooks and SaaS providers. It also provides the ability for users to personalize or enrich the metadata from existing enterprise semantic models such as changing the formatting of fields and adding new calculated columns. This can be a great tool for prototyping new data model designs or for one off reports that require custom data modeling.

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New Buttons

In the past, if you used buttons in your reports, the formatting options were limited. You were required to use a rectangle shape and customization usually required overlapping visuals. However, with the latest updates to button objects in Power BI, you can now choose between many new shapes, use custom icons, and more.

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Assign Line Chart Series Labels

Sometimes a legend is always enough and to further aid consumers of a report, it is helpful to be able to assign labels to elements in your visualizations. With this new enhancement, you are now able to provide more clarity on which lines are associated with categories using the new series labels formation option.

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Turn Off Total Column in Waterfalls Charts

Waterfall charts are great visualization to have in your toolbelt and with this update, you can now customize the visualization further by being able to control whether a total column is displayed or not. By default, this will be enabled to show what the total was across all the elements in the series, however you can turn if off under the formatting pane for the visual.

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Power BI Admins & Content Managers

Bulk Upgrade Classic Workspaces to V2 Workspaces

The Power BI team has created a bulk-upgrade tool within the Workspaces section of the Power BI Service Admin portal that allows admins to automatically update all the classic workspaces in their tenant to the latest V2 version. The new workspace is required to get the latest features and security enhancements in Power BI.

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Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) and Sensitivity Labels

MIP helps organizations classify and protect information as it moves inside and outside of the organization and across devices, apps, and services to prevent data loss. One of the main MIP tools to accomplish this is creating sensitivity labels and label policies that can be inherited across different data sources and file types. Once you create different sensitivity categories, you can enforce protection settings based on that classification such as encryption and content markings. In Power BI, you can assign Sensitivity labels to corporate data sources such as Azure SQL DB, Power BI Datasets and reports, and files such as Excel workbooks.

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Power BI Desktop Required Infrastructure Change

Microsoft is changing the components used by the Power BI Desktop application. Starting in Feb 2022, Power BI Desktop will move away from CerSharp to WebView2. To avoid interruptions, ensure that users that use PBI Desktop have ‘Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime’ installed on your machines.

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We are excited about what the Power BI team is releasing soon! If you’re interested in checking out the Power BI feature release plan in an interactive Power BI report click here.

The post Power BI Updates for QuickLaunch Customers: Q3 2021 appeared first on Preferred Strategies.

Sometimes junk data accumulates because organizations lack disciplined business processes. Additionally, they may not have the analytics framework in place to monitor those processes and ensure they are followed. Most dimensional or categorical data is generated manually by human input or by automated systems. When these fail, data is assigned inconsistent values and reporting on inconsistent junk data is nearly impossible.

Another cause of junk data is the lack of a planned governed decision framework. Many companies’ analytics efforts are focused on one specific ‘use case’ at a time. Each project becomes a silo built for a specific user or purpose. These independent repositories of data are not built using a common standard which leads to data structures varying widely from one solution to the next.

Alternatively, a governed decision framework will eliminate siloed solutions and have these characteristics:

1. User friendly

You shouldn’t need to be a data scientist to be able to use and understand the data.

2. Formatting

Dates, numbers, percentages, and dimensional values should be formatted the same throughout the data set. If you use ‘96.5%’ in one column, another percentage column in the same data set should not read ‘.965’.

3. Trustworthy

Aggregations of data should be able to be validated against the detail transactions so that end users know they can trust the information and insights obtained.

4. Completeness

If you have dimensional data such as a ‘region’ code, every row of data should always have a value. If the value doesn’t apply, show something like ‘N/A’ instead of leaving it blank. Blank values don’t tell the end user if the field was accidently or purposefully left out.

Preferred Strategies is often told by prospective clients that they want to ‘clean up’ their data before they start an analytics initiative. Our experience has been that until the prospective client embarks on an analytics initiative (and experiences the frustration of junk data), they will never have the process discipline required to enforce the creation of reliable, trustworthy data. If your company is ready build a governed decision framework which will help to clean up your data and provide a solid foundation for analytics excellence, contact us to see how we can help. That is, don’t just talk about the weather, do something about it.

The post Are You Ready to Tackle Your Junk Data? appeared first on Preferred Strategies.