Eliminating Data Warehouse Errors
At Teknion, we’ve been working with a large worker’s compensation insurance agency that needed help migrating their systems from on-site infrastructure into the cloud. Interestingly, they’re also using one of our partner tools, Validatar, for data quality automation.
Resultant Acquires Teknion Data Solutions
Acquisition of Dallas-based data solutions company to significantly expand Resultant’s mid-market private sector offerings
Artificial Intelligence is Neither
At Teknion, there are certain questions we get asked often. Some of the most popular relate to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. It is often marketed as a “magic bullet” for all of a company’s predictive woes.
Wordle Dashboardle: Beating Wordle with Tableau
Over the first few months of 2022, I’ve been on a bit of a Wordle craze. In early January, the game already had as many as 300,000 daily players. As soon as I learned about the daily word puzzle, I immediately started wondering how I could use data to optimize my guessing strategy.
RANSOMWARE SERIES: Demonstrating Truthful Documentation and Lessons Learned
Data governance assists tremendously in documenting and having the right policies, standards, guidelines, and procedures. This enables anybody in the organization, as well as insurance companies and other ruling bodies, to see the depth of documentation and ensure there is protection over their data.
RANSOMWARE SERIES: The Path Less Traveled and Tips of the Trade
When a business does not take ownership of its data, IT and cyber security end up having to pick up the tab on it. This is not a proper way for businesses to own data. They must have some form of governance so that IT and cyber know what they consider important and why, how they curate it and keep it healthy, and how they maintain the data’s quality.
RANSOMWARE SERIES: Is Data Governance a Team Sport?
When it comes to data governance, technical and business stewards are not always understood as being pivotal to the health, maintenance, and control of the data. Sometimes, cybersecurity professionals feel like they are the ones protecting the data. While they are to an extent, they’re not necessarily knowledgeable in the transformation of the data, the use of it, the meaning, the value, and where the data stands as an asset in the organization.
What the Rise of the DATA ACT Means for Data Analysts
The Data Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014, technically launched in 2017, is about to become more visible in 2022. This act seeks to create an open data set for all federal spending.
RANSOMWARE SERIES: The Lifecycle Management of Data
While the basics that make up the lifecycle of data management have been around for a very long time, the basics of cyber security are new. The following components of data governance are the foundation for these basics:
First, let’s tackle definitions. While there are many different definitions out there, Teknion’s Data Governance Practice Lead, Paola Sabiene, describes data governance as the following:
Moving your data to the cloud can help manage costs and increase agility. In the cloud, you can scale up or down as needed to handle spikes in demand and control costs.
Government Space Exploration & Their Third Parties Paid A Heavy Price Due To This DG Issue
Government Space Exploration and their Third Parties paid a heavy price in 1999 due to a data governance issue.
Reducing The Effects Of Ransomware With Data Governance
At Teknion we promote the 'governance by design' approach, which binds data governance to the ecosystem of digital risk management.
The best solution to managing risk is simple
Data Governance involves managing tangible risk.
The data governance practitioner has to balance privacy, security, and access in ways that the organization feels supported in its initiatives and progress.
Regulatory compliance will guide the minimal requirements for access control, lineage, and retention policies, but even these can pose challenges for companies that thrive in organic growth. Laws change, processes are slow to adjust, and risk appetites differ.
Tips For Building A New Cloud Data Warehouse @ Blue Cross Blue Shield
Having recently wrapped up a Cloud Data Warehouse project for a Blue Cross Blue Shield organization, I thought it would be great to share some insight into tips to improve your chances for successfully moving to a modern Cloud Data Warehouse. Whether the project is a new Cloud Data Warehouse or a migration from an on-premise Data Warehouse to the Cloud, you will find these tips helpful.
CHFA's Digital Transformation Journey
Last month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jon Sakanai, Business Intelligence Manager at Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA). CHFA is Colorado's trusted partner for affordable and responsible homeownership. Watch Video Interview Here
Teknion Announces Launch of Validatar 2020.4 & New Validatar Branding
Teknion Data Solutions announces the release of significant feature enhancements to Validatar, a data quality management platform developed by Teknion to “Improve Trust In Your Data” through the streamlining and automation of the discovery, testing & monitoring of an organization’s data assets.
Kudos to Tableau for pulling off a fully virtual TC 20 conference. Wow! Amazing orchestration of content, entertainment, speakers and technical delivery. Here is hoping we we can be back together in-person in 2021!
As we come out of the amazing TC 20 conference, we wanted to reflect on a couple of the sessions we attended and a general point of view of what we saw and heard this year.
Snowflake: From The Public Cloud To The Public Market
Snowflake’s IPO Signals Continued Momentum for Data Migration to the Cloud
Why Great Companies Invest in Data & Analytics During Market Downturns
COVID-19 has profoundly impacted our nation’s economy. While there are health metrics and indicators that provide reason for optimism that our country is nearing the peak of this pandemic, most market forecasts view a recession as increasingly likely due to the gradual, phased approach to reopening the economy.
Tableau 2020.2 – A GameChanger For visual analytics
Gamechanger is a term that is sometimes thrown around casually, but in the case of Tableau 2020.2 it is not simply a buzzword. Tableau has released one of the most paradigm-shifting features in years along with a plethora of new functionality that make life and visual analytics a lot easier. Here’s some of what the new release has in store:
David Hendrawirawan Joins Teknion To Lead Data Governance Initiatives
Teknion Data Solutions is pleased to announce the addition of David Hendrawirawan, Principal Consultant, to lead the expansion of our Data Governance consulting strategy.
Teknion Launches Comprehensive Client Solution Webinar Series
Fueled by our client's and community's request for more relevant and timely content, we are launching Teknion's Client Solution Webinar Series to represent the ever expanding diverse needs of our clients and the products, services and solutions Teknion offers to solve those unique data challenges.
Spatial Joins in Tableau with Excel, Text, Anything
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in August 2019 by Josh Milligan, Principal Consultant @ Teknion Data Solutions on his blog Viz Painter.
Michael Tantrum Joins Teknion's Sales Leadership Team
Building Data Literate Teams with Tableau–Building the Dream Team-Part 2
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in December 2019 by Bridget on Tableau Fit.
In Part 1 of this series "Building Data Literate Teams with Tableau – Busting the Buzzword" we learned that "data literacy goes beyond the chart", what comes next? We need people for our team to take our organization to the next level. And with that…
Building Data Literate Teams with Tableau–Busting the Buzzword-Part 1
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in December 2019 by Bridget on Tableau Fit.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Data literacy goes far beyond chart-making. Don’t get me wrong, charts are swell. I love them in fact and make a whole living out of designing some awesome looking charts (okay, there’s a bit more to it than that, but #AskAnAnalyst and that’s the answer you get).
Interns Rule The Summer @ Teknion
What happens when you bring four (4) highly motivated data and analytic interns into your company for the summer? Magic, pure magic. Teknion has always been lucky with our internship program. Every year we interview a large number of candidates for a few very coveted slots, always making for a difficult hiring decision. This year was no different.
Setting up Single Sign-On for Snowflake with SAML 2.0
In a recent POC, we were asked if single sign-on (SSO) could be achieved between Tableau and Snowflake using Auth0, a third-party identity provider (IDP). Additionally, the client was looking for the ability to use secured views in Snowflake to limit the data that was being accessed by a Tableau Report.
Overcoming Concurrent Write Limits in Snowflake
Recently, an industry association came to us to help them build a portal for receiving member data and a data warehouse for sharing the insights gained from that data. Snowflake was the obvious platform to support the data warehouse, but the client was also interested in using Snowflake to process and store files submitted by the member organizations.
How Tableau and Alteryx Helped Push One Candidate to a Mayoral Race Victory
Local political campaigns are revving up once again, and Tableau and Alteryx are on the forefront of electoral data. Community volunteer Coby Sparks, who you might remember
Teknion Achieves Alteryx Premier Partner Status
We’re honored and excited to be named an Alteryx Premier Partner, the highest achievement level possible for an Alteryx partner. This award puts us in a select class of companies world wide.
Save Time! Take Advantage of the Alteryx Toolkit
In June, just before the Alteryx Inspire Conference, we officially launched our “Teknion Toolkit for Alteryx. We wanted to remind they are out on our website and just how much time you can save creating workflows when you use these tools.
Teknion's Bridget Cogley and Joshua Milligan Earn Tableau Zen Master Honors Once Again
Becoming a Tableau Zen Master is like making it to Carnegie Hall. It starts with practice, practice, and more practice. However, like most top honors, it takes more than just practice to be the best. The same holds true for becoming one of 30 Tableau Zen Masters world-wide.
J.Reneé CIO Coby Sparks Speaks with Teknion
Teknion sat down with J.Reneé Group’s CIO, Coby Sparks, to learn how Alteryx workflows and Tableau dashboard reporting have transformed his business intelligence profile, allowing them to order and forecast inventory more accurately.
This Blog Is Significant (p≦0.05)
When I was a professor of quantitative methods, I made a deal with my students. They never said something is “significant” and I didn’t throw an eraser in their general direction.
From Day 1, I made it clear that the intolerable intellectual faux pas in quantitative analysis is not specifying which type of significance you were reporting. And lest they would think there were only a couple of types, I would have them read Leach and Onwuegbuzie 2004; (Link To Article) to illustrate that there are now four different ways in which we can discuss significance: statistical, practical, clinical, and economic.
K-Means Clustering: How do I decide the number of clusters to retain?
One of the great frustrations in performing a cluster analysis is determining the correct number of clusters to retain. In their article “Clustering: Science or Art?”, Guyon, von Luxborg, and Williamson argue that “the major obstacle is the difficulty to evaluate a clustering algorithm without taking into account the context.” However, determining the appropriate contextual statistic is sometimes daunting and the data scientist typically leans on the default selection from the software package being deployed. And while a analyst should never depend on the canned recommendations for selecting the correct number of clusters, it is sometimes the case that default determines practice.
A Summer with Teknion: The Internship Experience
Introduction by Jeremy Parulian-Teknion Consultant
This summer, Teknion hosted its 5th annual class of interns. Over the course of 10 weeks, the interns developed a host of skills through training, mentoring, presentations and involvement in both client and internal data analytics projects.
Our internship program is a great way for college students to get real-world, practical experience, providing them with an opportunity to give a career in consulting and data analytics a test run and the ability to earn decent money during the summer.
There are several “actors” involved in the use of any Google API. The two main actors from a Google user account standpoint are:
Alteryx Inspire 2018 Re-Cap & A Look To The Future
Wow, it was a whirlwind event at the Alteryx Inspire 2018 Conference last week, and it truly lived up to its tagline, “Alter Everything”!
Teknion's Deanna Sanchez Named an Alteryx "ACE"
At the conclusion of the 2018 Inspire Conference, Alteryx announced its Analytics Excellence Awards as well as the newest class of “ACEs” in its ACE program. The ACE program is designed to recognize the most prominent experts and influencers currently using and evangelizing the Alteryx platform.
Tableau Implementation Strategies-Which One Will Work Best For Your Organization?
*This blog builds upon a webinar conducted by Teknion’s Bridget Cogley and Joshua Milligan, both Tableau Zen Masters. The webinar can be viewed here:
Traditional BI Rollout for Tableau; Does It Ever Really Work?
We recently wrote a blog about several different rollout strategies of Tableau into your organization, where we outlined when each strategy can work, and when each strategy can potentially fail.
Falling In Love With Tableau Prep
There have been two times in my 14 years at Teknion Data Solutions that I have fallen in love with what I do. I mean, I’ve enjoyed all of it. I really liked writing custom software for clients in the early days and moving data around in transactional systems. I liked making web applications. I enjoyed learning data modeling and helping clients solve problems and gain insight into their data by building data warehouses. Some of the early ETL tools were a bit tedious, but it was still a great feeling to populate a useful data structure. But both Tableau and now Tableau Prep have changed my world and allow me to serve my clients in amazing ways!
WHERESCAPE TIP: Partitioning a Fact Table by a non-Date dimension
One of the benefits of utilizing WhereScape RED to automate your Data Warehouse development is its drag-drop-click capability. This is especially the case when creating a partitioned Fact table. The dialogs walk you through identifying whether you want to partition by Day, Month or Year.
Alteryx For Good Week 2018: Continuing the Commitment
Deanna was featured in a recent Alter Everything Podcast developed by Alteryx. You can download the podcast here.
It all began for us during Alteryx For Good Week 2017; Alteryx User Group and AFG staff had let our Dallas Alteryx User Group leadership team know about the upcoming volunteer opportunity. They mentioned a few non-profit organizations that either already had one free Alteryx For Good desktop Designer license, or were interested in obtaining a license. One of the non-profits stood out: The Commit! Partnership, who had a license, but would like to have assistance in really utilizing it to its potential.
"Partnering with DataRobot to bring machine learning to AI-driven organizations"
This week DataRobot officially announced its AI Partner Program. As one of the first companies to align itself with DataRobot, I would like to invite and welcome new and future AI Partners into this community.
Leveraging Triggers In Alteryx Workflows
Your workflow may have dependencies or ordered steps built into it for it to execute properly, whether it is the download of a file, a needed sequence of events, or any number of other reasons why controlling the order of the execution is important. However, the first item in that set of tools has no input or any mechanism to control when it will start. Not implemented properly, the workflow may not execute correctly.
Leveraging Tableau Public and Google Sheets To Track Your Favorite Stocks
Disclaimer: The ticker symbols considered in this blog post and the files associated with the blog post are for example purposes only. None of the content should be construed as investment recommendations. Use the techniques discussed below at your own risk.
Thank you to everyone that attended the recent webinar showcasing Tableau’s 10.5 release! For those that weren’t able to make it, we created this blog as a quick read to get the scoop on the latest features with the Tableau 10.5. And for a more in-depth look, you can view a recording of the webinar or visit the Tableau site.
Teknion Data Solutions and DataRobot Begin Joint Partnership
Teknion Data Solutions, the Dallas-based technology consulting firm specializing in business intelligence, data management, and advanced analytics, announced its partnership with DataRobot, providers of an automated machine learning platform that uses state-of-the-art AI to build highly accurate machine learning models in minutes.
Why WhereScape and Snowflake Are Perfect for Each Other.
As you modernize into leveraging the latest and greatest in terms of business intelligence tools, your strategy for managing the data will modernize with it. Snowflake and WhereScape are doing just that with their recently announced integration. They are made for each other, and WhereScape automation for Snowflake is another great step forward for business intelligence toolkits.
5 Elements of an Effective Business Intelligence Culture
There are two sides to implementing business intelligence (BI). Often, we talk about the hardware and software implementation, and then the data warehouse design and tools needed to directly solve the data problems we face.
Your boss calls you and wants to know some information. No problem, you’ve got Tableau! You’re like a Jedi ready to roll your lightsaber of charts against the dark side of no information. Except, you guessed it, your boss wants a table… again.
Hacking Your Health with Tableau
After a less than ideal report on some recent bloodwork, I decided it was time to start focusing on my health. My doctor had said that while my test results were not great, my relatively young age meant that some simple life changes could really improve my overall health. However, there was a problem: I had a goal (improve my health) but no system in place to track and achieve that goal.
Why Automation Changes the Game with Data Vault
WhereScape continues to push the boundaries of what data automation means. With the recent release of WhereScape Data Vault Express they have made the increasingly popular data vault 2.0 model more accessible to everyone. Data vault is an exciting way to handle your data that is better suited to large and fluid amounts of data, and a model that offers stronger auditing and change management. Let’s dive into what data vault is, and how automation makes it that much better.
This past week was Tableau’s annual conference, and as usual, it didn’t disappoint! 15,000 data nerds descended upon Las Vegas to learn more about Tableau, data and have some fun. Read on for some of the key insights that we learned throughout the week!
The Top 6 Reasons to Attend Tableau Conference 2017
Tableau Conference gets us excited every year, for after all we are data practitioners. If you have never been to Tableau Conference and are passionate about data visualization, there are so many great reasons to attend. We thought about cheating and saying there were over 400 reasons to attend thanks to all of the sessions, but all joking aside, here are the top 6 reasons to attend TC17:
Enjoy Preston's #data17 playlist while you read his blog.
What will be Revealed at Tableau Conference 2017?
Tableau Conference is definitely the highlight of the year and 2017 will no doubt be another amazing event! TC17 returns to Las Vegas and promises many incredible experiences: Keynotes, sessions, networking with the Tableau community, parties, Tableau Doctor and more! In fact, I’ll be co-presenting a session with fellow Tableau Zen Master and Teknion consultant Bridget Cogley (Data Play-Doh) and competing against Tristan Guillevain and Jacob Olsufka in the Iron Viz!
Self-Service at a Glance with Tableau
The buzzword these days is “self-service”. We have self-service kiosks, web portals, and the like. But what does it mean when we talk about self-service for business intelligence (BI)? Let’s dive into Tableau to find out.
10 Questions to Find the Right Way to Roll Out Tableau
It can be hard to know where to start when it comes to rolling Tableau out to your organization. There are some good practices and guidelines, but in my experience, there is no best way, only the right way for your organization.
The Case for Tableau Training: How ROI Justifies the Expense
Training is powerful. Training is also expensive. Although paying for an instructor and material can be significant, the greatest cost is likely time away from work for the attendees. Because of the expense, spurious arguments are often made that on-the-job training is sufficient; in other words, that formal training is not worth it. As a full time Tableau trainer, I emphatically disagree! I am passionate about the value of training and have written this article to provide sound arguments for the value of formal training – arguments you can use to strengthen your case to convince others to support your training goals.
The Impatient Analyst Meets Alteryx
Let’s face it – some of us lack the virtue of patience. Having come from a startup background where I spent too many years without a spare second, learning new software for me means diving right in. Add to this impatience the absolute inability to learn from lectures, and you have someone that believes in the “This is Sparta!” approach to learning. Smarter, more patient people take the time to watch videos. Me? I prefer to dive right in.
5 Themes from Alteryx Inspire 2017
My one dominant takeaway from the Alteryx Inspire 2017 conference can be summed up in one word: maturity. The company, the product, the community all felt strong and healthy. The trend lines are all pointing in the right direction. I didn’t feel a lot of marketing hoopla that makes you question the depth and truth of it.
Alteryx Inspire 2017: Top 10 Takeaways You Should Know About
I’m writing this as I fly home to Dallas from Alteryx Inspire 2017. What a fantastic conference packed full of great content, but more importantly, great people! What a phenomenal community of men and women have come together around Alteryx and the mission of making today’s analysts the superheroes of modern organizations. For those of you who couldn’t make it to Inspire, I’d like to share the top 10 takeaways that have me excited about where Alteryx is headed:
First Impressions at Inspire 2017: Alteryx is Brilliantly, Comprehensively Coherent
I’m generally skeptical of how much I can learn in two days, especially at a conference where there is a bombardment of information and sensory overload. I learn best by following a “whole-to-particular” approach: start with an overarching concept, and then move into a detailed, methodical analysis of the particulars that make up that concept. Bombard me with a bunch of different subjects in a random order over a short span of time and I will get lost. This is what normally happens at conferences for me.
3 Inspire Conferences, 3 Different Employers — Don’t Judge
One of my recent social media posts got a bit more attention than I expected: “2015 as a customer, 2016 as an employee and now #alteryx17 as a partner!” Well, I’m probably over-exaggerating, but I’ll take my 26 likes on LinkedIn, dang it!
Alteryx Selects Teknion Data Solutions as Professional Services Preferred Partner
Teknion Data Solutions is proud to announce that it has been selected as an Alteryx Professional Services Preferred Partner. Teknion has experienced tremendous growth as a Value-Added Partner with Alteryx for the past three years and is proud to be among the small number of companies chosen.
Data Prep, Data Blending and Data Integration with Tableau and Alteryx
In my day-to-day role as a data consultant, I have never run across a situation where a single data source answered every question. Many times I work with clients that have two, three or even a dozen different sources of data. It might be various on-premise databases with some cloud data sources and an extraneous Excel document or two. Sometimes there are directories full of PDFs or text files. Occasionally, there’s a JSON or XML feed with valuable data that needs to be captured.
Quiz: Which Tableau Training Course Is Right For You?
Take The Tableau-Training Diagnostic Quiz To Find Out!
A few months ago, my family of five was out to eat at my daughters’ (we have three) favorite chicken wing restaurant. When the check arrived at our table, it was a little higher than I expected it to be. No big deal, right? Even my middle daughter knew how to solve our immediate need. “Dad, you can just use your credit card!”
Teknion’s Joshua Milligan Named a Finalist in Tableau Public’s 2017 Iron Viz Contest
First Zen Master. Now Iron Viz finalist. Teknion Data Solution’s own Joshua Milligan was named the “Big Winner” for the first of three Tableau Public Iron Viz Geospatial feeder contests earlier this month. His submission, The Changing Shape of History: From Colonies to the United States, featured a comprehensive history of the United States with design nods to historical documents.
How I Planned My Wedding Using Tableau
On September 17, 2016, I got engaged to the love of my life. It was a day of great joy and excitement for the future. On September 18, an interesting thing happened: that jubilation was suddenly replaced by the realization that we had three and a half months to plan a wedding. It was time to get to work!
WhereScape Tip: Using PowerShell to Translate XML SOAP Response to CSV
The Wherescape RED automation tool works extremely well with main-stream sources of data, such as files and databases. However, in today’s world of cloud processing, there may be a need to pull data from the cloud through an API interface.
The 10 Commandments of Visual Analytics in Tableau
I. KNOW THY AUDIENCE
Recently, a colleague showed me a complex dashboard he had just completed. Although he was pleased that he had managed to get it working well, he felt the need to apologize by saying, “I know it’s dense and complex, but it’s what the client wanted.” Occam's Razor encourages the simplest possible solution for any problem. For my colleague’s dashboard, the simplest solution was rather complex. This is OK! After all, that’s what his audience required. Consider the below suggestions for appropriately targeting your audience:
Do BI Directors Really Have to Sell BI Projects?
When it comes to business intelligence, there’s an inherent gap between IT and business groups. IT is focused on technical restrictions and providing BI solutions that align with the reality of the business,
4 Dangers to Avoid in Data Storytelling
Stories are powerful. They connect an audience with people, facts, emotions and action. They help us understand difficult concepts and relationships.
Solutions for the 3 Biggest Business Intelligence Challenges Facing Executives
In my experience, only about 20-30% of BI strategies are fully implemented successfully. This could be even
The Linguistics of Data Visualization
Is data visualization a language? I think so.
When asked about language, we often point to spoken language examples
Business Intelligence Isn’t Dead. It’s Just Been Redefined.
In 2016, Gartner said that business intelligence is dead. Why did they say that? According to the company
Teknion Named Tableau’s 2016 Services and Training Partner of the Year
Tableau recently held its Annual Partner Leadership Summit in Seattle and Teknion Data Solutions is proud to announce that it was one of eight partners recognized at the Jan. 23-25 event.
3 Ways Data Can Help You Rapidly Gain Insight Into Your Business
Data is the foundation of any modern business. If you aren’t transforming that data into intelligence, however,
5 Ways Tableau Delivers Quick Wins for Your Company
Business intelligence is not just about the speed of building, analyzing and visualizing data. It’s also about using
4 Crucial Elements to Streamlining Your BI Strategy
Turning raw data into information that you can use in your business decision-making can be tricky.
7 Ways to Get The Most Out of Your Tableau Free Trial
Free trials are great for getting to know a product or service before you commit to purchase.
5 New Features in Tableau 10 That You’re Sure to Love
As you may already know, Tableau 10 has been out since August. If you haven’t had a chance
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