Data Thinking for Business Leaders

Dan Murray is the Director of Strategic Innovations at Interworks and is the author of Tableau This. He recently completed a blog series entitled BI Cantos, which is about how to successfully deploy a business intelligence system, which is the topic of this conversation. We discuss the critical thinking, tools, and consultants needed before, during, and after business intelligence implementation. We also address several myths surrounding these projects.

Who is Dan Murray?

Dan has nearly 30 years of business experience as a CFO/ CIO/ COO/VP Planning/ VP Operations and decided to join InterWorks to provide the best possible data visualization solutions available.

He is the author of Tableau Your Data, and his contributions to the Tableau community have earned him the title of Tableau Zen Master.

Recently, he completed a blog series called The BI Cantos, which includes twenty-one posts covering four parts:

• Part I: Rationalizing and Planning
• Part II: Establishing Foundations for Success
• Part III: Licensing, Expanding, and Maintaining
• Part IV: Cultivating a Data Culture

Interview Highlights

• The reason BI solutions cannot be purchased off the shelf
• Myths surrounding BI implementations
• The blog series to be turned into a book
• The purpose of the strategy roadmap
• Early and quick results through sprints
• Proof-of-concept with high visibility and value
• Databases, data extracting and transformation tools, and dashboards
• Snowflake, Databricks, Fivetran, Matillion
• Tableau, Looker, Power BI, Thoughtspot, and Mode Analytics
• The three simple definitions of a dashboard
• Reporting, analysis, and discovery
• When the best time is to hire a consultant
• Data awareness vs. the drive to grow data capabilities
• Dan’s recent favorite books

Episode Pairings

1. From Data Extraction to Business Insights
2. Data Visualization for Financial and Business Leaders
3. A CFO’s Playbook for Data Science and Analytics
4. Technology for the Next Generation of Retail and Beyond
5. Dave Kellogg on SaaS Metrics

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