QlikView Reviews

Growing up in the 80′s and 90′s, one of my favorite TV shows was the A-Team. Over-the-top, cartoonish action with huge explosions, cars flipping over in mid-air topped off with a cool theme song. And all without anyone getting seriously hurt. This was the perfect TV show for young Barry!

But I’ve grown up since, and my tastes have matured (somewhat). However, there is one thing about the A-Team which I think is still relevant today: the actual A-Team and the well-balanced blend of skills of its members. No matter what an episode’s villain (drug king-pin/shady land developer/corrupt senator/whatever) threw at them, the combined qualities of the A-Team always ensured that they came out on top.

In today’s post, I am going to take a closer look at the skills and qualities of the A-Team, and will explain how they can be translated to the role of a QlikView Consultant. (Or, alternatively, how these roles can be used to staff the perfect QlikView Competency Center.)

-- B.A.: Technical genius and a pragmatic attitude --
Let’s start with the character every kid in my class wanted to be: Bosco “B.A.” Baracus. Forget about the kick-ass hand to hand combat skills and bad temper, as a QlikView Consultant, it’s B.A.’s technical genius that you’ll want to emulate.

Invariably, the A-Team will get pinned down somewhere (usually a barn) by the episode’s bad guys. What follows is a 5 minute montage in which B.A. welds together an entire armored vehicle out of scrap metal. In the next scene, we see the A-Team using this vehicle and some make-shift weapons to defeat the villains. (Who, for some reason, never see this coming, despite the A-Team using the exact same tactic in every single episode)

For a QlikView Consultant, the takeaway is that you should strive to continually improve your technical skills. Besides that, when the situation calls for it, you need to be able to keep your head down and do the work. Doing the work is a lot easier when you have the right tools, in this case not an acetylene torch, but a toolbox of scripts and solutions (either your own, or a third party one such as QlikView Components or QlikView Addict’s Codebox) that you can use to quickly build a solution in a modular, maintainable manner.

-- Murdock: Analytical skills and general knowledge --
Don’t let the goofball impression of H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock fool you. While he may seem to not be all there, he is in fact a deep and analytical thinker.

Every episode sees Murdock obsessing over a new subject, historical character or object. This greatly annoys B.A., who refers to Murdock as a ‘crazy fool’. (in reality, even though B.A. will never admit it, they’re the best of friends) Despite his strange behavior, throughout the series, it becomes clear that Murdock is an analytical thinker, has a broad general knowledge and is very aware of current events and trends in the world. More than once do his brilliant, out-of-the-box ideas save the team.

While as a QlikView Consultant you’ll probably want to avoid the “raving madman” association, in my opinion, you do need to possess some of Murdock’s analytical and out-of-the-box thinking skills. Not only to apply them to your client’s projects, but also to periodically apply them to your own way of working. There are always ways in which you can improve.
Besides purely analytical skills, you also need to have a broad general knowledge of business processes and functions, as well as general market trends. Technical proficiency may be mandatory to get the job done, but real value is added when you understand the client’s business and market, and because of this, his/her problems and needs. There’s nothing wrong with ‘obsessing’ a little over a new field of knowledge if it helps you become more effective and efficient.

Combining the skills and knowledge of BA and Murdock leads to a T-shaped profile that I believe comes very close to the ideal profile for a QlikView Consultant; a deep, technical understanding of QlikView and peripheral methods, technologies and skills, combined with sound analytical skills, business knowledge and a broad general knowledge. As your experience grows, both the base and the roof of the T become broader and deeper, adding extra value for your clients and making you a more all-round professional.

Of course, we still have two more characters left, and as we’ll see, their skills and knowledge are just as important.

-- Face: Communication skills and persuasion --
Templeton “Faceman” Peck is the A-Team’s suave and smooth-talking con man and womanizer. He is always able to procure whatever supplies the team needs to get the job done.

The superiority of Face’s ability to convince others is demonstrated by the fact that he is able to break Murdock out of the same military hospital in almost every episode. Even after hundreds of successful escapes, each time using the exact same approach, he is still able to convince people that they should let Murdock leave with him. That’s an impressive display of persuasion, rivaled only by the Jedi mind trick.

Of course, womanizing and duping people aren’t really things you should be doing in a professional environment. However, as a QlikView Consultant, you will want to take at least a few pages from Face’s book. You can have best the best technical and analytical skills in the world, they’re useless if you cannot clearly communicate your ideas and are able to rally people around your cause.

Whether it be gathering requirements, getting access to various resources, designing interfaces, presenting your business case or just plain office politics (unfortunately a reality in many organizations), having excellent verbal and written communication skills and being able to present a convincing argument will greatly increase your effectiveness as a consultant.

-- Hannibal: Project management and leadership --
John “Hannibal” Smith is the leader of the A-Team. He is a master tactician, planning for every contingency and always ensuring that “the plan comes together”. His leadership ensures that the team is directed towards the common goal.

He also likes to wear very bad disguises, but nobody’s perfect.

One of the reasons for Hannibal’s continued success is the formulaic approach he takes to his projects. Every episode of the A-Team roughly plays out the same:

Bad guys harass innocent victims → Victims hire A-Team → B.A. says he won’t go on no plane → B.A. gets drugged and is put on the plane → A-Team confronts villains about their dastardly deeds and urges them to stop → Bad guys ignore the advise, take the A-Team by surprise and lock them up → A-Team builds weapons from scrap metal, escapes and beats up the bad guys in a fist fight → Villains go to jail → Credits roll.

You may find a lot of faults in Hannibal’s plan (I certainly see a few) but at least he is following some sort of methodology and he consistently delivers within the agreed-upon 60 minute timeframe. As a QlikView Consultant, you should also be following a consistent methodology to deliver your projects. I prefer to use Scrum, but any method will do, as long as it follows a predictable and consistent process that results in quality output delivered in a timely manner, with the end result meeting the client’s expectations.

Besides Hannibal’s project management skills, the most important takeaway for the QlikView Consultant is his leadership and focus on the end-result. Hannibal is really the one who brings the plan together, by keeping the team together. Without Hannibal, the individual qualities of the A-Team’s member would become unproductive; impulsive action (B.A.), paralysis by analysis (Murdock) and cheap talk (Face). Hannibal ensures that the team maintains just the proper blend of skills and qualities to get the job done, every time.

-- I love it when a plan comes together --
And that’s how I think the skills of the individual A-Team members relate to those of an ideal QlikView Consultant. Unfortunately, like the A-Team, consultants that actually meet this ideal combination of skills and traits are very hard to find. Often one specific ‘personality’ will be more present than others. As a consultant, once you’re aware of this, you can work on developing the other qualities. The Magic A-Team Quadrant (shown below) can be a very useful tool to assess yourself, or your team.

[To see the diagram go to: http://www.qlikfix.com/2013/03/26/what-qlikview-consultants-can-learn-from-the-a-team/]

Besides the ‘All-round QlikView Consultant’, the obvious hero of this story, I’ve added two profiles that I often encounter:

- The IT Consultant: has great technical skills, but has problems understanding the business context of what they are doing. Often delivers exactly what the client asked for, but not what they need. Applications tend not to be used after they leave.
- The Business Analyst/Management Consultant: knows exactly what the client needs, but has problems delivering a technically sound solution. Applications tend to fall over after they leave.

Where are you? And where are you going? Would be very interested to hear about your thoughts in the comments.

PS. Should you be based in the Netherlands and either feel that you already meet the ideal profile, or aspire to attain it; I’m hiring. Drop me a line and let’s chat. And no, unfortunately there is no company van :)

Yesterday, I had a very nice meeting with the folks at Qlikview (thanks, @DHurd11 & Andy for making the trip). They partnered with a local DC consulting firm by the name of Tandem Conglomerate. I had the pleasure of working with Ben Nah from Tandem Conglomerate last year – and I can vouch that their talent is top-notch. Qlikview is smart to find partners of this caliber – and utilize them to better serve their customers.

As a technologist, I always have my eyes open to exploring new technology. This is always challenging with long term contracts, university politics, and an ever-changing IT landscape. However, for me, vendors have to prove why they should remain at the top. Competition is healthy for everyone as it makes us constantly improve. I should also say that as long as we have a defined data model, the reporting tools that we use on top of that data model are fluid. The point is not to constantly change and rip out what you’ve done just for the sake of redoing it, but it is important to keep an eye on the latest technology, experiment, and find what is best for your organization. This can be done gradually with small pilot projects to prove value. We’re actually in the process of doing one of these pilot projects with Hadoop.

Ok – so you’re probably wondering why I titled this post ‘real-time data collaboration’? During the Qlikview presentation yesterday, I saw something that really resonated with me. And, that was the ability to collaborate, in real-time, on the same Qlikview dashboard.

This capability is a market differentiator for Qlikview. As many of you may have seen from Gartner and in my previous post regarding Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for BI, this is one of the reasons that Qlikview remains ahead of competitors such as Tableau. Other dashboard vendors may provide the ability to ‘share’ with others, or embed the dashboard into a web page or part. Don’t misunderstand. This is NOT the same.

During their product demonstration, Qlikview demonstrated the ability in real-time to share dashboards. This means that you can select the filters/parameters that you would like to analyze, hone in on the particular area of interest, and share it in real-time. The recipient can then see that selection, modify it, and as they modify the shared dashboard, it will update your dashboard. You can modify and send changes back to the recipient as well. VERY COOL! Kudos to Qlikview on this feature.

Disclosure: I am an industry analyst focused on self-service business intelligence and data analysts. QlikView and Tableau user. Current clients include QlikView, Spotfire, and Tableau.

What’s the future of BI? Last fall, one sharp source of mine answered, “Two words: Tableau and QlikView. You didn’t hear it here.”

Those are startling words coming from that source, a well-regarded BI consultant known for big-name clients and their big deployments.

At about the same time, a column of mine appeared in Information Management titled “Don’t call it BI” — in which I mentioned Tableau and a few smaller tools. A reader emailed, “You should also become familiar with QlikView.”

My many Tableau-using friends say QlikView is hardly worth a look. Poor visualization! Control panels! Scripting! “It’s so — yesterday,” one emails.

It’s “yesterday” to some yet it’s the future to others. It’s time for a look.

Both Tableau and QlikView promise the same magic: Listen to one pitch and you might think that you’re listening to the other. Each sets itself up against traditional, big-iron BI. Each claims to empower business users by giving them all the data and control they need for free discovery. Each is easy to use. Go inside each tent, though, and you see how different they are.

Metaphorically speaking, Tableau is West Coast. It’s built for discovery by the individual. Just show up and ride on the breeze, the demos seem to say, free as a seed fairy on a meadow. The inevitable mistakes of discovery are quickly undone and forgotten. Create the most dazzling visualizations — “vizzes” — thanks to built-in best practices that nudge you toward beauty and punch.

One of the most attractive aspects is users’ effervescence. They seem to be riding on the wind and solving business problems all at once. Their rapture sweeps me away every time I’m near it.

If Tableau is West Coast, QlikView is East Coast. Its community is bigger, the third-party add-ons are more plentiful, support seems more available, and overall workflow feels more structured. It too is built for discovery, but it’s discovery rooted in community. The “associative experience” reveals relevant data, and you can create your own views and in quick succession ask any questions, anticipated or not. But unless you’re working alone, someone else probably defined the data and its structure for you. This is QlikView’s counterpart to Tableau’s meadow, though it’s more like a manicured garden than Tableau’s unfenced field of daisies.

QlikView’s boundaries may be more apparent than Tableau’s, but I suspect that there’s at least as much power there. I just haven’t yet been able to judge it for myself well enough.

The trouble for me is that I’ve used it alone, as if stuck in a remote cabin. Though even Thoreau might have liked the “associative experience,” QlikView really comes alive only when you link to others.

As in Tableau, any QlikView user can create or modify a workspace, a document linked to one or more sets of data with any number of displays. Unlike Tableau, QlikView isn’t so finicky about data; for one thing, linking to Excel spreadsheets is easier.

I can’t speak with assurance just yet on the differences between QlikView and Tableau Server — more on that later — though I think I see a QlikView edge there.

One other advantage for QlikView is clear: built-in collaboration. True, Tableau workbooks can be passed around in a variety of ways forever. But as with our atomized life on the West Coast, such a community would be for me, the hypothetical manager of a group, too loose for comfort.

Tableau users will shudder, as if about to be extradited back to Maine. “Great, central authority all over again,” they would say. Yet when I imagine myself managing a group, I would feel disabled without a tight, integrated social structure.

“It’s the soft stuff that matters,” TechTarget research director Wayne Eckerson likes to say. Such stuff is what interests me more than anything: Who are these people and how did they choose what they did?

Have most Qlik or Tableau users chosen their tool the way most of us choose spouses, religion, and politics — guided by our relationships? How many software shoppers qualified their candidates with lists of requirements and features and followed through based on evidence? Did they do what a veteran sales person at a large BI vendor sees?: “They gather requirements, they issue RFPs, they visit trade shows, they talk to vendors, and ultimately they pick one because they like its color.”

I think it’s usually about “color,” color being the cover story for something most people can’t quite describe. For now, though, I’m happy to say that at least my first question has been answered: Yes, QlikView belonged on that list in “Don’t call it BI.”

Pros:
Speed
Flexibility
User Friendly
Associated Search
In Memory

Cons:
Reporting is quite difficult to get right, but if you spend you will get it right

I left my Job of 15 years to work with Qlikview full time, that alone will tell you what I think of it, a full review to follow