I've received a number of similar questions lately regarding the absence of any new posts over the last year or more and my sudden return. So I thought I'd address them all out in the open. Here goes....
Am I still alive? Yes, thankfully I am.
Have I given up Qlik? Are you kidding? Until they develop an effective treatment I'll remain an addict.
Showing posts with label qlikview addict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label qlikview addict. Show all posts
Tuesday, 6 February 2018
Monday, 12 May 2014
Theft
It saddens me greatly that I'm having to write this post, but here goes...
From time-to-time I receive requests from other websites and authors for permission to reproduce parts of my blog posts. I am normally very flattered that people consider what I write is good enough to reference or reproduce, and until today, I have been more than happy to give approval to such requests. The only thing I have ever asked is that they make it clear what material they have reproduced and to cite the source when doing so.
Unfortunately, I have today come across another blog which has copied images and entire posts word-for-word from QlikViewAddict.com. After taking some legal advice I have sent the owner of the site a copyright infringement notice. This time I am far from flattered!!!
I am also saddened to say that I recognise material from other prominent QlikView blogs too and so if you are the author of a QV blog, please drop me a message so I can send a link to the offending site. I refuse to advertise it here.
For anyone that wants to use any material from this site, unless otherwise stated, I am the sole author and copyright owner of all material published on QlikViewAddict.com and I politely request that you contact me and ask before doing so. You'll find a big "Contact Me" button at the top of every page of the site and I don't bite (well only at the weekends). I receive a lot of messages via this site and I try to reply to as many as I can. Unfortunately, due to having a family and paying customers to keep happy, I don't get to answer them all but I do my best.
From time-to-time I receive requests from other websites and authors for permission to reproduce parts of my blog posts. I am normally very flattered that people consider what I write is good enough to reference or reproduce, and until today, I have been more than happy to give approval to such requests. The only thing I have ever asked is that they make it clear what material they have reproduced and to cite the source when doing so.
Unfortunately, I have today come across another blog which has copied images and entire posts word-for-word from QlikViewAddict.com. After taking some legal advice I have sent the owner of the site a copyright infringement notice. This time I am far from flattered!!!
I am also saddened to say that I recognise material from other prominent QlikView blogs too and so if you are the author of a QV blog, please drop me a message so I can send a link to the offending site. I refuse to advertise it here.
For anyone that wants to use any material from this site, unless otherwise stated, I am the sole author and copyright owner of all material published on QlikViewAddict.com and I politely request that you contact me and ask before doing so. You'll find a big "Contact Me" button at the top of every page of the site and I don't bite (well only at the weekends). I receive a lot of messages via this site and I try to reply to as many as I can. Unfortunately, due to having a family and paying customers to keep happy, I don't get to answer them all but I do my best.
Monday, 13 August 2012
QlikViewAddict.com - 7000 Monthly Page Views
Astonishingly, QlikViewAddict.com is now getting over 7000 page views a month.
For a change, I'm truly speechless! So all I'll say is a huge thanks to all of you who take the time to read my ramblings and I'll try and post a little more often.
For a change, I'm truly speechless! So all I'll say is a huge thanks to all of you who take the time to read my ramblings and I'll try and post a little more often.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
QlikViewAddict.com is the First QlikView Blog for Amazon Kindle
OK, so I might not have been posting as much as I'd like lately but I have been busy behind the scenes on a number of new additions to the site. One of which I'm very proud to launch today.
QlikViewAddict.com is the first QlikView blog available for the Amazon Kindle. Its easy to subscribe and any new posts will be automatically delivered to your kindle for you to read at your leisure. For those who have the pleasure of sitting on trains a lot like myself, my Kindle is a lifeline to keep me sane. Unfortunately, there is a small monthly subscription fee of just 99p. I'd love to provide it free (Amazon actually won't let me) but the subscription fee covers the cost of delivering updates to your Kindle automatically.
I'm still fine tuning the integration with Amazon, so expect the odd formatting error but hopefully these should be ironed out very soon.
To subscribe, simply click the Amazon Kindle logo on the right navigation bar, or search for "qlikviewaddict" in the Kindle Store on your Kindle device.
QlikViewAddict.com is the first QlikView blog available for the Amazon Kindle. Its easy to subscribe and any new posts will be automatically delivered to your kindle for you to read at your leisure. For those who have the pleasure of sitting on trains a lot like myself, my Kindle is a lifeline to keep me sane. Unfortunately, there is a small monthly subscription fee of just 99p. I'd love to provide it free (Amazon actually won't let me) but the subscription fee covers the cost of delivering updates to your Kindle automatically.
I'm still fine tuning the integration with Amazon, so expect the odd formatting error but hopefully these should be ironed out very soon.
To subscribe, simply click the Amazon Kindle logo on the right navigation bar, or search for "qlikviewaddict" in the Kindle Store on your Kindle device.
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Becoming a QlikView addict
My introduction to QlikView isn't that different to many others. I started out as a customer back in 2005, QlikTech had just opened their UK
My role at the time made me the interface between the outsourced IT partner and the business, running around trying to tie everything together to ensure projects got delivered and if possible on time and budget. One day a senior manager dropped me an email with a link to the QlikView website and a note asking me to let him know what I thought. He'd been told about QlikView and wanted to know if it could do what the "marketing gumf" said it could. After a quick read through the material I replied to the email with a large dose of scepticism but was told they were coming in to give us a demo.
Back then, BI tools were all what I'd now refer to as "Traditional BI". Complex, cube based tools that required a life time and a small army to implement successfully. I'd worked on a couple of BI projects and didn't have a very high opinion of their value for money. The day of the demo dawned and I'd been having a terrible week. Several projects had hit problems, I was getting pressure from all sides and I could have done without losing an hour to someone trying to sell me a tool I was convinced we didn't need. In the end I resolved myself to the fact that at least I'd be able to ask a few technical questions and enjoy watching them squirm trying to answer.
What happened instead wasn't so much a demo as an hour of consulting and it truly blew me away. This pre-sales consultant sitting before us had managed in an hour to show us how to load a relatively large volume of data from our own systems into QlikView and built some rudimentary charts on top. Admittedly the end result wasn't pretty or efficient but it worked and if that could be done in an hour, pretty and efficient couldn't take long either. I was hooked on the spot and went away with a trial license in my pocket (long before the days of personal edition) and an intent on having a go myself. The rest as they say is history and needless to say it didn't take us long to decide to buy.
What made me decide to write this post was a discussion I was having with a customer last week who had recently purchased QlikView. We were discussing his introduction to the tool and how his experience was different from my own. There are now a plethora of traditional BI, data analysis and visualisation tools available with each claiming to be better than the rest. Customers have seen and done it all before and so achieving that same awe factor is much much harder.
Over the last few days since, I've continued to play over this idea in my mind. The conclusion I've come to is that whilst some aspects of introducing a person to QlikView may be different today, there are a lot of similarities too. And most importantly of all I am convinced that the similarities are the most critical aspects of the process. Much like I thought, most potential customers believe they have seen and heard it all before; that fundamentally all BI tools are the same. They don't want to be sold to, are too busy to listen to yet another pre-rehearsed sales pitch, and have other problems they'd rather be concentrating on.
What any QlikView salesperson needs to do most of all is to NOT sell QlikView. No, I've not gone mad (I've been that way for quite a while), what they need to do is to help the customer. Don't waste their precious time, help them to understand how QlikView can instead save them time and a massive headache. Make it relevant to them; anyone can demo a pre-made application that they know inside and out. If possible, build something with their own data, or at the very least have a demo application that is relevant to what they do and don't just demo it, develop it. They don't want to believe you, why the hell should they, they want to see for themselves.
QlikView must stand apart from the mass of BI tools available. Forbes last week placed QlikTech at number 3 in their Fast Tech 25 List of the fastest and strongest growing companies in theUS
Looking back, that's basically what the pre-sale consultant did for me. He helped me to see how QlikView was different, how it could be implemented so quickly, efficiently and not just be another expensive, painful IT project for our business. That was why I was blown away in 2005, and that's not changed an iota between then and now.
My role at the time made me the interface between the outsourced IT partner and the business, running around trying to tie everything together to ensure projects got delivered and if possible on time and budget. One day a senior manager dropped me an email with a link to the QlikView website and a note asking me to let him know what I thought. He'd been told about QlikView and wanted to know if it could do what the "marketing gumf" said it could. After a quick read through the material I replied to the email with a large dose of scepticism but was told they were coming in to give us a demo.
Back then, BI tools were all what I'd now refer to as "Traditional BI". Complex, cube based tools that required a life time and a small army to implement successfully. I'd worked on a couple of BI projects and didn't have a very high opinion of their value for money. The day of the demo dawned and I'd been having a terrible week. Several projects had hit problems, I was getting pressure from all sides and I could have done without losing an hour to someone trying to sell me a tool I was convinced we didn't need. In the end I resolved myself to the fact that at least I'd be able to ask a few technical questions and enjoy watching them squirm trying to answer.
What happened instead wasn't so much a demo as an hour of consulting and it truly blew me away. This pre-sales consultant sitting before us had managed in an hour to show us how to load a relatively large volume of data from our own systems into QlikView and built some rudimentary charts on top. Admittedly the end result wasn't pretty or efficient but it worked and if that could be done in an hour, pretty and efficient couldn't take long either. I was hooked on the spot and went away with a trial license in my pocket (long before the days of personal edition) and an intent on having a go myself. The rest as they say is history and needless to say it didn't take us long to decide to buy.
What made me decide to write this post was a discussion I was having with a customer last week who had recently purchased QlikView. We were discussing his introduction to the tool and how his experience was different from my own. There are now a plethora of traditional BI, data analysis and visualisation tools available with each claiming to be better than the rest. Customers have seen and done it all before and so achieving that same awe factor is much much harder.
Over the last few days since, I've continued to play over this idea in my mind. The conclusion I've come to is that whilst some aspects of introducing a person to QlikView may be different today, there are a lot of similarities too. And most importantly of all I am convinced that the similarities are the most critical aspects of the process. Much like I thought, most potential customers believe they have seen and heard it all before; that fundamentally all BI tools are the same. They don't want to be sold to, are too busy to listen to yet another pre-rehearsed sales pitch, and have other problems they'd rather be concentrating on.
What any QlikView salesperson needs to do most of all is to NOT sell QlikView. No, I've not gone mad (I've been that way for quite a while), what they need to do is to help the customer. Don't waste their precious time, help them to understand how QlikView can instead save them time and a massive headache. Make it relevant to them; anyone can demo a pre-made application that they know inside and out. If possible, build something with their own data, or at the very least have a demo application that is relevant to what they do and don't just demo it, develop it. They don't want to believe you, why the hell should they, they want to see for themselves.
QlikView must stand apart from the mass of BI tools available. Forbes last week placed QlikTech at number 3 in their Fast Tech 25 List of the fastest and strongest growing companies in the
Looking back, that's basically what the pre-sale consultant did for me. He helped me to see how QlikView was different, how it could be implemented so quickly, efficiently and not just be another expensive, painful IT project for our business. That was why I was blown away in 2005, and that's not changed an iota between then and now.
Thursday, 19 April 2012
It wasn't me officer!
I received a message this week asking if I might be the infamous "QlikView addict" from the well known video released back in 2006. Alas, I can't take credit for this but I thought I'd post it for those who have never seen it. If you can't remember the days of QV 7 & 8 you might not get all the jokes but it's still amusing to watch.
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