A person’s facial expression sends very strong signals. Can we leverage this knowledge with the help of software to fill the notorious motivational deficits among employees? Can an animated version [...]

A person’s facial expression sends very strong signals. Can we leverage this knowledge with the help of software to fill the notorious motivational deficits among employees? Can an animated version [...]

Employees want more recognition. Bosses want more time. Can computers help? Could an avatar of the boss trigger the same emotions in employees as the real boss would? Perhaps. Here are my first thoughts [...]

I have already dampened the enthusiasm for fans of self-service BI, the promise of do-it-yourself analyses on all levels of a company. Now here is more food for thought: Working with KPIs is tricky and [...]

Self-service BI is allegedly one of the current trends in Business Intelligence. I certainly hope not! That would mean that financial controlling, IT and senior management have capitulated to Business [...]

Time and time again, supervisory boards fail miserably. But why? Our guest author Murat Suner wanted to know and asked the business information systems expert Prof. Peter Mertens, the brain researcher [...]

That was the name of our event in Berlin. 180 people from reputable companies came to experience Jutta Kleinschmidt, Prof. Gerhard Roth, Bechtle, Leica, Porsche as well as our own ideas live in person [...]

Wow! The German news magazine “Der Spiegel” mocks business economists because they believe in human rationality. The international controller organization ICV says that controllers defend the rationality [...]

Is the mouse an endangered species? Are iPads and iPhones making their users computer illiterate because they now only use things that they can operate with their thumbs? And is this good or bad news [...]

The recommendation lists at Amazon are legendary, and how they work is almost as big a secret as the Coca-Cola formula. Just kidding – it’s not, of course. We’ll explain the “magic formula” [...]

Today, we will take a look at a few more ways how we can use the momentum of Big Data to make companies more data-driven. We already know that business professionals should guide IT when it comes to Big [...]

Whether it’s hype or not, Big Data is the revival of data mining – and one that has been long overdue. Big Data is bringing new momentum into data-driven corporate cultures. But knowledge alone is [...]

Thinking is strenuous and expensive – but it gets less strenuous and less expensive with practice. Habits can also develop through practice. So which habits can improve Business Intelligence? Here’s [...]

You can only tell if something is worth reading after you have already read it. But then you don’t have any more time to read the things that you should. The time we have to read and think is limited [...]

It is hard to top all of the praise and adoration given to infographics. They are supposed to help us understand numbers better by transforming them into images. Is that true? Do financial controllers [...]

Does BI need the iPad? Form and content shape the substance of things. If the question of form, however, is degraded to a question of which platform, content will suffer as a consequence. Is that something [...]

Information has to be fluctuation-proof – especially when it deals with risk: Oftentimes, people who produce information today are new in the office, new at doing it, or only do it sporadically. And [...]

Is the end of dashboards near? Because visualizations with unrelated content are too complex for our "narrow" human minds? Because we literally cannot see through things because the eye sequences get [...]

Animating statistical data can be tricky. Nevertheless, motion pictures are a step up from photos. We want to get closer to the action. We don’t want to just see results; we want to see how we got there [...]

Companies are managed using numbers and words. The clearer they are, the better. That is why we recommend banning words that don’t have a clear message. We’ve done it – and don’t regret it.

Colors are supposed to make reports easier to read and understand. We've given some thought as to how that works best – and have realized: "easier" is hard with colors. So before we add to much color [...]

When you look at many management reports, you could think that you were standing in front of a photograph or painting that doesn't have a main motif. If all image components are treated equally, it is [...]

We have to turn our databases inside out. As long as we are only saving (and not using) information, the time and effort we have spent producing and storing it was all for nothing. Read more about these [...]

Last time, we unveiled the secret of our monitor wall. Today, we’ll go one room further and show you what else you can do with a wall full of on-screen parameters – besides, of course, stealing the [...]

Actually, we wanted to keep this to ourselves a bit longer. But before someone else copies it and takes all the credit, we’re announcing it now: Peeking through the keyhole is out. Panoramic views are [...]

Our August post on a botched-up scale in a “Spiegel” graphic has made some waves. A magazine for infographic designers picked up on our arguments and dedicated a two-page spread to the topic – with [...]

Controllers are supposed to be consultants. Their reports are supposed to have a message – ideally, in the title as well as in the comments and summaries. Today, we’ll learn how to formulate messages [...]